Beta Testing at its Best?

[Ace Rimmer]

Played a few games last night/this am...

The first one here (not sure when I played it) is with a couple of players that said they had just recently got the game. I put all of my naval units in the Indian and just played around with different naval strategies I thought I'd try. Russia (blackrob) did fairly well.



This next one I don't have a screen shot on hand, but here is a semi-decent video of it (the second half is sped up). Played with xander and Hank Scorpio. Thanks to Hank, I lost four subs early on (near Greenland) and my other eight took on heavy casualties when they surfaced above Russia/Europe. Had they been able to do their duty, I would have focused my Silo launch on xander.

xander seems to place his naval units in very small fleets and stays conservative with them. (correct me if I'm wrong) This kept me from advancing towards southern Africa most of the game, plus having to fend off Hanks navy. I nuked the ocean like crazy trying to rid the seas of ol' Hank. After xander didn't make a large push up the Atlantic, I figured he was taking the long way around to position himself off my west coast. Very late in the game he managed to take out the west coast because of that.

Hank launched his silos pretty early and wasted a bunch of nukes expecting resistance in the New England area. Heh. He thought xander and I had some sort of secret alliance. I tired to get a cease fire from xander just before I launched my silos thinking he was in striking distance, but he declined.

Very good game. Here is the "video" Edit: better version, now 32mb
I apologize for the quality, but I put it together in a hurry and at the end of my lunch break.

The next game, our spectator from the xander/hank game joined, hatikva. He was sandwiched between me and Hank and all three of us were trying to convince the other two that each player was plotting to tag team the other at Defcon 1. It was pretty funny. Anyway, Defcon 1 hit and Russia disappeared. I had twelve subs firing at hatikva, but I think Hank beat me to Moscow, not sure. He sent a massive bomber wave at the end that had me scrambling crop duster pilots just to get planes in the air. When I retaliated, I pulled back from the brinks of defeat to second and had I concentrated my fire a bit better, could have taken first. "Just...two...more...points...ah dang!"

Good game as well.



The last game was survivor (which I tend to fail at) but was another fun excursion into global thermonuclear war. Most of the game Gen. Ripper and I were battling it out in the Pacific. I was able to pick off his Silos with multiple bomber raids one by one until he had one lone silo standing. Peackeeper was ahead the whole game until I launched. What saved Gen. Ripper was I wasted too many missiles on that one silo (it was in launch mode when I hit it with six nukes) and he had subs over Russia in just the right spot and waited for me to open up. Another close game.

[peacekeeper]

I gotta quit playing at 2am.



Jeff

[xander]

Regarding the game between Ace, Hank and myself:

My initial fleet deployment was designed to be very defensive. I set up a perimeter of carriers and subs to detect any incoming subs, and take them out. As I figured that northern Africa was dead anyway, I clustered my silos in the south, hoping to protect Kinshasa and the rest of southern Africa. Airbases were deployed to, hopefully, give me good coverage against incoming bombers. Once Defcon 3 hit, most of the subs went into active mode, and most of the carriers went into bomber launch mode.



Throughout Defcon 3 and 2, Ace and Hank left me along. At Defcon 1, I started trying to take out Hank's silos and RADAR. I threw wave after wave of bombers at him, and did a bit of damage, but not as much as I would have liked. It turns out he had some RADAR towers in eastern Europe that I could not see, so his silos were shooting farther than I thought they should be able to. Other than that, I played very conservatively. I wasn't trying to do anything other than keep Ace and Hank out of the south Atlantic. I really didn't care where the rest of their units were.

After a while, Ace finally launched his silos against Hank. This cleared my path to launch against Ace, though I didn't use it immediately. You see, was certain that Ace had put some subs or carriers in the Pacific, and was going to come after my east coast. As such, I didn't want to weaken my formation over there. When I realized that he hadn't, I started moving my carriers and subs about, some to the Atlantic, four carriers to the Pacific coast of the US. When my carriers finally arrived, amidst some connection problems, I started launching my silos.



In the end, I was able to win largely thanks to geography, I think. Ace and Hank were forced to fight each other for the Pacific, and left me largely alone. This meant that, by the time they were ready to come after me, they had no nukes left. Also, just to thumb my nose at Ace, he only took out 2 of my battleships and one sub with his nukes. I finished the game with 82 nukes left, and most of my fleet intact (I lost three other subs to carriers, and one to bombers). I think I like survivor scoring. ;)



xander

[Ace Rimmer]

Had I known you were that conservative, I would've made a strong push south and stopped around South Africa. I was sure you had your main fleet just out of my radar range and didn't want to end up fighting you and Hank trying to move south. Guess I could have come at you by way of Australia.

My plan was to hit Hanks silos with my twelve subs and use my silos against you at the end, but hank took out four of my subs early on (via Carriers) and then I had the other 8 too close to him when I surfaced so they were pretty much dead in the water.

Next time I'll have to revamp my strategy...

Edit: [urlhttp://rapidshare.com/files/29366109/xander_hank.wmv]Updated xander/Hank video[/url], much better quality, you can even read the comments clearly. 32mb. 1024x768 resolution (I think)