Asia vs North America 1vs1 First Strike Strategy

In-depth tactical discussion on how to lose the least

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Barbarossa
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Asia vs North America 1vs1 First Strike Strategy

Postby Barbarossa » Wed Jul 14, 2010 1:44 am

Asia vs North America 1vs1 First Strike Strategy



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There are 6 player/teams in Defcon so therefore in a 1v1 scenario there are 30 possible plays. Playing as Asia vs NA is NOT the same as NA versus Asia. There are structural and strategic differences due to geopolitics (or in this case just sheer geographical features) so in total there are 30 different ways (team configurations) a 1v1 game can be played in Defcon..

Each continent has its own pros and cons in terms of geographic location, access to water, proximity to other continents, etc.. But I believe there should be a set way to "win" each and every scenario (all the combination and permutations thereof) in 1v1 in Defcon. When it comes to 2v2 it is much too complicated (too many different permutations to be able to feasibly categorize) and of course it goes without saying that in Diplomacy mode its more the chat box manipulation than skill or anything else for that matter..

In the same sense that hypothetically every possible move in chess could be reduced to a "branching tree" or "opening book".. Defcon is also a "dead game" (doesn't mean it isn't fun!) in the sense that if the community could come up with best placement and best strategies tailored towards each of the distinctive 30 types of 1v1 plays, then anyone could utilize such a "book manual" to win/ or tie/ or lose the least in any conceivable defcon game.. Essentially if a group of people pre-calculated these values/tables and come up with a 30 set of best winning strategies then anyone could beat anyone, it would be reduced down to a game of tic-tac-toe...

Below I will demonstrate a particular Asia vs NA 1v1 strategy/tactic that all but guarantees ~100% victory rate for any beginner to intermediate defcon player who uses it for the first time against another player of similar skill strength who was previously unaware that such a strategy would be employed on him... For the expert players this tactic would not work against them (probably not) and they wouldn't need to read this anyway..


5. First thing in game start by creating four groups of two subs per set for eight subs total and send them underneath Mexico for a surprise attack at NA later on in the game..

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4. Then create the rest of your fleet in the Pacific however you like.. I did mine like so.. Make sure to have enough carriers in antisub mode to detect and take out any potential subs that NA could be sending your way.. We need to defend the Eastern coast long enough for us to launch our offensive at defcon 1 and since all six Asian silos will be in launch mode for 20 minutes after defcon 1, we are extremely vulnerable during that period of time and cannot afford any surprise bombers or sub attacks.. Try to gain at least have the Pacific, and if possible hold the line. Do not let NA scope you out and keep them back for as long as possible, after the offensive you don't have to worry about defense , you can just sit back and enjoy the rest of the game.

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3. Place your radar, silos, airports as indicated on the screenshot below.. We will concentrate defense on the heaviest population centers only, and gather all our radar, and airports near the silos for added protection. We will not worry at all about the Middle East or even what happens in the India. Since your radar covers only the Eastern coast, place a carrier + battleship + sub in the Indian Ocean as extended radar in case NA sends a fleet of subs from the Atlantic and tries to attack Hong Honk, Shanghai, etc from the Indian Ocean.. Other than that our defense is concentrated only on the Eastern coast of Asia.. Don't even worry about anywhere else.

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2. At defcon 1 immediately switch to real-time for the launch. Never launch in time compression because that ruins the timing. Launch all of your nukes in all of the silos. Activate silos and target NA cities in this order..

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Basically you want to launch silos furthest away from the NA first, and then the closer ones. Silos are launched from a left to right order..

You want to target the NA cities furthest away from Asia first, and then the closer ones. Cities are targeted from a right to left order..

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Here is a video demostration :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aSpPEQZJIA


We are sending six nukes (synced and packed) per NA city to the top 10 most populated NA cities.. In case you can't see from the screenshots or youtube, the ten cities we are targeting with our silos are in the following order:
NYC, DC, Detroit, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Phoenix, LA, and San Francisco.


If you launched at Defcon 1, the nukes should start impacting NYC at around 00:59:00, the flight time is 0:27:18 and it takes 2 minutes to initially activate.

1. At around 00:55:00 (just under five minutes till initial impact at NYC) your four sets of two subs should be arriving under Mexico or at least close enough in position.. Logically reorganize the subs into two sets of four.. You want to position all of them to be within striking range of NYC in case NYC didn't get successfully hit..

The population of NYC is 22.7 .. that is about the same as the TOTAL combined population of the bottom 15 (smallest 15) NA cities COMBINED! Therefore, even though launching your subs at or around 00:55:00 will guarantee a nuke strike from all sides and more overwhelm the NA silos, a better and safer strategy is to wait until NYC impact to see if NYC was successfully striked.. If NYC didn't even get hit, or only half the population got killed... it is much more efficent to launch your entire subs nukes all at NYC (and if you do it in sync order it is guaranteed success no matter how well protected NYC is..) than to spray them at the much smaller cities.. Once you've verified the three largest cities on the East coast got destroyed (NYC, Chicago, DC) then proceed to strike at the smaller untargeted and undamaged cities, if any of the three large cities were only partially destroyed, you must take care of them first!

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0. At this point the top 10 NA cities should have been obliterated. If your silos didn't destroy all the top 10, your subs should have finished the job.. and hopefully if you had subs nukes left over to spare, you should have proceeded to target the remaining largest cities sorted by distance and oppurtunity order. The top 10 account for 75.7 and if you were able to target with your subs just five more cities you would have nuked 85.4% of the NA population.. NA will try to strike back
so if your subs survived the launch bring them back to the Asian East cost and send bombers and figthers to extend your radar into the Indian Ocean and above near the north pole and ride out the retailitory strike.. Any remaining carriers and subs put to sub hunting..


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So to recap, strike first, strike fast, strike hard, and get the upper hand of the population and by succeeding in destroying an overwhelming portion of NA's population very early on in the game, you are almost guaranteed victory unless you are playing with expert player. New players to defcon (even such as myself!!) can use this Asia vs North America strategy to score a quick and easy win (against unsuspecting players of approximately same player ability) even without much skill/effort/etc involved !!!!! I have play this scenario a dozen times in the past few days and never once gotten beat, this is not because I'm skilled at Defcon, rather or people who have never played you before, using this strategy is almost like the SuiSilo strategy for Diplomacy 6 player mode in that it virtually guarantees victory!



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sfericz
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Postby sfericz » Wed Jul 14, 2010 6:41 am

I'm glad you joined the forums. Nuf'said
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rus|Mike
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Re: Asia vs North America 1vs1 First Strike Strategy

Postby rus|Mike » Wed Jul 14, 2010 7:55 am

Barbarossa wrote:But I believe there should be a set way to "win" each and every scenario

Only versus exact player. There's no 100% win strategy for any setup.

Although, there are some very effective once, like The Star of India. I also have fixed strats for Africa vs Europe and Africa vs Russia that gave me 100% wins so far but that only happened because I didn't play enough matches for someone to finaly defeat me in those setups.

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