Let's Play: SuperPower

[Geminex]

Hmm... I'm fine with taking the smaller nations first... though let's limit ourselves to the most valuable ones... But we'll have to take a big one and make ourselves unpopular eventually... Is there anyway we can minimize the diplomatic repercussions of invading the more important African states? With the US's support, with our fairly huge military, our allies? Can we use covert terrorism against ourselves, blaming Nigeria? Something along those lines.

Before this, I wasn't really considering a nuclear programme. But if we develop one, could that stave off war? Because at the moment, the only thing stopping us from gaining economic supremacy is the fact that people would get annoyed if we capture the countries we need to...

[Flarecobra]

We have before, when we first invaded what I'm calling "New Netherlands."

[Solid Snake]

Do we control some inland territory of Saudi Arabia, still? I can't quite tell the difference between the light-gray shaded and green-tinted territory we possess.
I want to go after Morocco next. I think my general strategy recommendation would be to clear out enough of North Africa and annex Croatia and use all that territory as a staging point for taking out Europe, with the aid of the United States. Then once we consolidate Europe we'd finally be in a far superior economic and infrastructural position and we'd be able to challenge the United States, develop nukes without consequences, and hopefully invade Russia.

We should definitely also consider consolidating our west African holdings into a single territory, whereas now it seems cleaved up into several smaller segments.

Finally, we should pursue an alliance with India in order to ensure Pakistan isn't invaded by Indian forces anytime soon. Regardless of who controls Pakistan, India probably wants that territory, and now it's just been conquered by forces that do not have access to Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. India might get greedy, or they might, alternatively, be quite pleased with the removal of the Pakistani threat. Either way, an alliance would protect a border in a region where we probably won't be terribly active anytime soon.

[Dracorion]

We could try to attack ourselves more than once and pin it on the bigger African nations. Does the game let you pretend that you captured someone? Because we could pretend to capture one or two groups to show that we're not entirely incompetent.

It's been like, thirty years since we faked our attack, shouldn't everyone have forgotten about it by now?

[Geminex]

Do we control some inland territory of Saudi Arabia, still? I can't quite tell the difference between the light-gray shaded and green-tinted territory we possess.
I want to go after Morocco next. I think my general strategy recommendation would be to clear out enough of North Africa and annex Croatia and use all that territory as a staging point for taking out Europe, with the aid of the United States. Then once we consolidate Europe we'd finally be in a far superior economic and infrastructural position and we'd be able to challenge the United States, develop nukes without consequences, and hopefully invade Russia.

We should definitely also consider consolidating our west African holdings into a single territory, whereas now it seems cleaved up into several smaller segments.

Finally, we should pursue an alliance with India in order to ensure Pakistan isn't invaded by Indian forces anytime soon. Regardless of who controls Pakistan, India probably wants that territory, and now it's just been conquered by forces that do not have access to Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. India might get greedy, or they might, alternatively, be quite pleased with the removal of the Pakistani threat. Either way, an alliance would protect a border in a region where we probably won't be terribly active anytime soon.

We still control quite a chunk of Saudi Arabia, I think.
An alliance with India might be good, but not essential. India got screwed pretty hard by the honorable US of A last time they attacked us, I'm guessing they're still recovering and not too keen to try again.

I'm very much against doing much more than we've already done in Africa. The North isn't all that wealthy, correct me if I'm wrong, and while it'd be useful to have should we be invading mainland Europe, I'd advise against said invasion for now. Our forces and big, but I doubt they're big enough to take on the entirety of Nato military, particularly since quite a few of those have nukes. Admittedly, they might neglect to use them again, but I wouldn't count on it.

No, let's put off the invasion of Europe for now... When our West African conquest is complete, I'd advise much more strongly to take the middle East. Partly because this'd give us a third staging area through which we could strike at Europe, but primarily because of oil. We already have West Africa and once we have Nigeria, we'll have quite a chunk of the world's oil output. Taking the middle east will only enlarge our growing monopoly. Once we have the middle east, we can capture the most oil-productive south American regions. Then we turn to Northern Europe, Norway, Finland, Sweden. And then we control about 80% of the world's oil, particularly if we get a trade agreement with the US.

We could challenge the Nato in a few years' time and maybe even win, but I prefer the oil strategy, since it's fairly subtle, shouldn't require excessive military force, and because eventually we won't even have to fight Europe, we can just buy it. Either that or watch its economy collapse and march in once they can no longer support an army.

[Bob The Mercenary]

Do we control some inland territory of Saudi Arabia, still?

Yep, we still have the center region. Along with Venezuela, which China and Brunei will just not stop sitting their ships offshore and hitting with cruise missiles. The coast is the only part we don't officially own and is being occupied militarily by Japan. I'm starting to feel sorry for that place.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v619/BobtheMercenary/sp211.jpg

I started an arms trade with the U.S. so they can rebuild a little to support me while buying units off of me. I also opened a cultural exchange with India to soften them up a little. Who knows if they'll be our allies by the end, what with all the different wars going on. And it looks like NATO might slowly be starting to rebuild. The U.S. is now allied with the U.K. and Italy, along with us.

Before this, I wasn't really considering a nuclear programme. But if we develop one, could that stave off war?

Once we got it it would. But, in the time between start and finish, people would be more hard pressed to stop it from happening. We would be slightly more likely to be attacked, but not if we wait until our relations are good. After that we would have a little more room for error. Though it wouldn't stave off all war. Eventually something would give.

We can consolidate our African territories most easily by taking Nigeria. That seems to be our next logical target. Then we can move on up the coast. We'll probably end up trying the oil baron strategy.

We could try to attack ourselves more than once and pin it on the bigger African nations. Does the game let you pretend that you captured someone? Because we could pretend to capture one or two groups to show that we're not entirely incompetent.

It's been like, thirty years since we faked our attack, shouldn't everyone have forgotten about it by now?

You'd be surprised. This damn game is Skynet. The AI is designed to learn from your play style as you play. But, it's also designed so that every country has a different AI, and none of them know who the human player is. It can get freaky.

[Geminex]

Very well then. No MAD for us, then. So, I guess, just put some more money into aid, perhaps lower the oil price a tick... It'll cost us, but if it raises our popularity more quickly we'll regain whatever we lost from the oil in nigeria. Seriously, that place is fucking loaded. Are there any other ways to soothe the tempers of the world and let us continue in our conquest more quickly? It's already been mentioned to use covert tactics to fabricate an excuse to invade nigeria... but can we use covert to directly raise our popularity?

And speaking of popularity, we're still sinking money into propaganda, aren't we? I'm fine with that, we need to stay in control of the country after all. What interests me is what the propaganda that we so constantly produce would look like... I sorta have an image of posters on every street corner, glorifying the president and his loyal counsel. "Look into the faces that will lead us to victory!"
And perhaps a poster for each individual member, depicting his or her virtues and, of course, loyalty.

[Bob The Mercenary]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v619/BobtheMercenary/sp221.jpg

I wonder why that is. >_>

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v619/BobtheMercenary/sp220.jpg

I'm going out for drinks with friends. When I return, the attack begins.

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

And perhaps a poster for each individual member, depicting his or her virtues and, of course, loyalty.

Even the crazy ones?

[Dracorion]

Even the crazy ones?

Especially the crazy ones. Mine would be: "Aren't you glad this psychopath's on your side?"

Which reminds me, we need to start thinking long term. I want to be crazy prepared for Europe. Start fortifying ourselves like we were storming the beaches tomorrow. Not only would it make it that much easier to deal with what they'd throw at us, we can do it sooner; and be prepared just in case someone tries to do something crazy at us while we're taking Africa.

[Vauron]

There are noncrazy ones?

[Geminex]

That depends how you define "crazy". Cause if anything, I think we're mad. As in "Mad scientist".

Not insane as such, but unstable, and willing to cross more boundaries than is usual.

Speaking of unstable...

HOW LONG DOES ONE DRINK TAKE? I WANT TO SEE HOW WE INVADED NIGERIA!

In absence of that, does that thread on the superpower forums still exist? The one where you obtained world domination? And if so, link plz?

[Dracorion]

HOW LONG DOES ONE DRINK TAKE? I WANT TO SEE HOW WE INVADED NIGERIA!

He never said it was gonna be one drink. Methinks our fearless leader is probably passed out in a manhole in Madrid, with his wallet missing, a wedding ring on his finger and a tattoo on his shoulder that says "Roberto".

We'll probably see him sometime next week, after the annullment papers are sorted out.

[Flarecobra]

You know, somehow I suspect the attack didn't go as planned...

[Geminex]

This is all Nigeria's fault somehow...

[Bob The Mercenary]

You know, somehow I suspect the attack didn't go as planned...

Our military analyst is most...analytical.

Yeah, it failed...hard. Sorry it took so long for me to get back to you, but it seems no amount of self-destruction can give us enough reason in the eyes of the world to go after Nigeria. We might just have to work around them for now. I'd say try the smallest regions in Africa first.

Failing that, we go nuclear.

[Geminex]

Argh. What happened? Does the world just clobber us?

[Solid Snake]

Bob.
...Bob.
...Mr. Mercenary.

You just solved your own problem.

Think about it.

The whole world goes berserk and declares war when someone invades Nigeria.
The United States is ridiculously powerful right now and we'd rather like the whole world to declare war on them.

Hint: I hear America is a beautiful place for our covert forces to potentially vacation this time of year. Just make sure they pack some Nigerian flags, those things are awfully beautiful decorations to leave at the site of terrorist attacks!

[Bob The Mercenary]

38 countries including Russia and most of Africa declare war on us and smack us upside the face. They then proceed to free every non-annexed territory we occupy. Then hit us with sanctions.

Hint: I hear America is a beautiful place for our covert forces to potentially vacation this time of year. Just make sure they pack some Nigerian flags, those things are awfully beautiful decorations to leave at the site of terrorist attacks!

You...

I...

...

PROMOTION!

[Geminex]

Ouch. I thought we destroyed most of the African military in the battle of Lybia? Apparently not... Are there any other ways of getting into control of Nigeria? Because I'm not sure how taking the rest of Africa would benefit us... Do any of the regions we could be capturing have any major resources? Because just owning stretches of desert wouldn't really bring that much of an advantage...

Nukes... Would they provide a good deterrent? I don't have much experience with the AI, so I don't know...

Anyway, other than the stuff I've mentioned, I've got two strategies we could try.

I assume the world gets pissed off at our taking Nigeria because there's a lot of people buying Nigerian oil. Can we lower our own oil price to reduce countries' reliance on said oil?

If not, can we somehow get Nigeria (and only Nigeria) to declare war on us?

As for getting the US to attack Nigeria...

It's an interesting idea... But how would we benefit from it? Particularly since the US would probably win.

[Bob The Mercenary]

If not, can we somehow get Nigeria (and only Nigeria) to declare war on us?

As for getting the US to attack Nigeria...

It's an interesting idea... But how would we benefit from it? Particularly since the US would probably win.

Nigeria seems to be ruled by bleeding heart pacifists. Six major terrorist attacks and their relations with us went from kinda lightish green to a soft pink. They should have been blood red after just one. I think covert actions are out of the question for now.

The U.S. actually most likely wouldn't win that war because all they have left is part of their air and ground forces and no soldiers. And their enormous navy that would be picked apart given enough time. I'm kinda wondering how we would benefit from it too now. To take their land we would still have to declare war. Doing away with their army isn't our problem.

[Daimo Mac, The Blue Light of Hope]

?

As for getting the US to attack Nigeria...

It's an interesting idea... But how would we benefit from it? Particularly since the US would probably win.

It would make the world hate the US and all we would have to do is sever ties with them.

[Geminex]

Oh, right. They lost it as a result of all those wars...
In that case...
Putting soldiers on their coast and then declaring war obviously fails horribly. Could we position forces just offcoast, then have the attack Nigeria, then join the coalition? Our forces would have to do most of the on-land fighting, but we'd be on-site far earlier than our allies. And really, they can have central US if they want, all we need are the coasts, and everything non-mainland. (That is to say, Alaska, Hawaii and any other territories they've captured.) The only thing that worries me is the US Navy. But then again, our allies can deal with that.

[Bob The Mercenary]

It would still translate to a war declaration by us on them, causing the world to flip out.

I'd honestly put forward a request to forego all war for a while and concentrate on starting our nuclear arsenal. It would help deter war and we would be able to actually put a Flarecobra to sea and Geminex-I's in our silos. Once we have a nuke sub we can position it off the coast of Africa and fuck up anyone that decides to impede our progress.

Researching nukes intimidates the AI. Using nukes shows you're serious.

[Geminex]

Very well. Special advisor approves of request to finally field weapons under his name.

[Solid Snake]

I have another idea.

Let's say we assign our Covert Operatives the duty of pretending they're American.
And then we just have them fuck up every other developed country with major terrorist attacks.

Think of how hysterical this could be! All these countries would find Stars and Stripes, Ayn Rand books, Elvis CDs and baseball gloves at the site of the crimes. Soon, all the other nations would begin to suspect there was a secret terrorist network of Americans secretly plotting to kill innocent civilians. The evil spread of capitalism, the dominance of the English language, all those damned Hollywood celebrities...all sinister plots, enacted by American terrorists to undermine the sovereignty of other nations! It'd all start to make sense in the minds of European and Asian governments.

Soon, Japan and China and all of Europe would rise up against these sinister suburbanites who harbor terrorist thugs!
(Also the thought of other nations accusing America of harboring terrorists just makes me laugh.)

[Flarecobra]

(Wow. That was just my trusting my gut...)

I say go for it. After all, sometimes one needs a little peace as well as war.

[Bob The Mercenary]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v619/BobtheMercenary/nukes.jpg

Next update will probably be Saturday. Grandma's in the hospital. That's another reason I haven't been on.

[Daimo Mac, The Blue Light of Hope]

It would still translate to a war declaration by us on them, causing the world to flip out.

I'd honestly put forward a request to forego all war for a while and concentrate on starting our nuclear arsenal. It would help deter war and we would be able to actually put a Flarecobra to sea and Geminex-I's in our silos. Once we have a nuke sub we can position it off the coast of Africa and fuck up anyone that decides to impede our progress.

Researching nukes intimidates the AI. Using nukes shows you're serious.

What about the Mac Fighters =3

Anyway while yes I advocate Peace. right now we should be concerning ourselves with aquiring powerful weapons.

[Geminex]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v619/BobtheMercenary/nukes.jpg

Next update will probably be Saturday. Grandma's in the hospital. That's another reason I haven't been on.

Expecting it anxiously. Though take your time. And tell you grandma "get well soon" from a guy on the internet.

Back to the game, should we be annexing west africa?

[Eltargrim]

So just a quick derail:

I just had this game delivered, and after taking forever to get working, it's actually really fun. In the year 2005 as Canada, I have a balanced budget, a 60+% approval rate in a multi-party democracy, Panama, and I'm occupying a slice of China.

I say slice because it was divided up quite nicely after every country in the world save Syria declared war on them. They did this because China launched four nukes at Zimbabwe. During the invasion China launched it's entire nuclear arsenal between South Korea and Russia.

Half of China's nukes on South Korea.

Holy fuck, that should be as smooth as glass.

I'm holding off on annexing the region, however, as it completely fucks my economy. I'll probably sell it off or something and continue with my occupation of Central America. Just have to avoid having the world invade me, like it did China.

Thanks Bob for letting me know about this game. It is very fun :)

[Geminex]

Curse you for making me think there'd been an update.

Though your Canada game sounds nice. When I get it I'll probably start with Germany and resolve to invade France before 2014.

How did you get your hands on it, by the way?

[Eltargrim]

eBay. Got it for 10 CAD, including S&H. Good deal so far :D

Although the autarky bug is going to bother me. I wanted the time to conquer the entire world!

[Bob The Mercenary]

Yeah, grab patch 1.4 if you can, but don't download any mods if you want to play multiplayer. XD All of us playing a game would be awesome. And it lets you save multiplayer games so you don't have to finish in one go.

I'm glad you're liking it. I had a game i posted about a while back where in the year 2040, the world just spontaneously lost its mind. I think Japan invaded North Korea, because of that China nuked Japan, then Russia nuked China, then China nuked Russia.

Update later today if I can, if not today definitely Monday. Sorry, it's been a ridiculous weekend.

[Bob The Mercenary]

March 15, 2044

Our nuclear program is well underway. This should present us with land-grabbing opportunites far beyond anything we have ever dreamed...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v619/BobtheMercenary/untitled-19.jpg

...of.

It appears a small coalition of nations don't find us deserving of our newfound technology. Our nukes will not come without a fight. Japan, along with a ragtag gang of third-world countries (and Israel) declared war on us together and launched a simultaneous assault on all of our current holdings, with most of their forces scheduled to make landfall along the coast of Liberia. On a normal day I would reload my last save and try to find a way to get around this obstacle without fighting.

But, today isn't a normal day.

I immediately called our troops out of reserve and enlisted 20,000 more to have on standby. I ordered our regiments sitting tight in Venezuela and mainland Netherlands along with the ones still in midwestern Africa to the coast. This was going to be fun.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v619/BobtheMercenary/untitled2.jpg

This was Normandy circa 2044. They engaged them with precision and cunning, cutting off most of the invading forces before they could get inland. The ones who made it any further then the beach were soon cut down from behind.

After the initial onslaught, Israel and Japan's armies arrived.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v619/BobtheMercenary/untitled3.jpg

The fighting went back and forth, some of their brigades marched south to the Congo to liberate it. Most of our casualties (and their were plenty) occurred in western Africa as more and more of their men dropped anchor and swam to shore. Our #8 ranked military were finally being tested to their extremes.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v619/BobtheMercenary/africabattle.jpg

At the end of the war I found that this would be the deciding battle. Pakistan. The AI actually tried to pull a fast one on us by sending massive amounts of small regiments to Africa, but sending their largest most destructive units to Karachi, trying to free Pakistan's missile fields so they could launch a counterstrike before it was too late.

As soon as the other battles were over I sent everything we had left to Karachi. The fighting there lasted almost three months, but we ended up dodging that bullet.

Wait, what's our navy been up to during all this?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v619/BobtheMercenary/oceanic.jpg

o_O *eep*

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v619/BobtheMercenary/sealosses.jpg

Well, at least they put up an honorable fight before they went down...all of them. :(

After retaking Benin and a few other regions we lost in the beginning, I sent our troops over to mainland Japan, Israel, Papau New Guinea, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo and took control of them all. Anime for everyone! And this is funny, in the process of attacking Japan I ended up liberating the coast of Venezuela which they had been occupying. Maybe they can actually start defending themselves from those terrorist attacks now!

The newest additions to our family.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v619/BobtheMercenary/holdings1.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v619/BobtheMercenary/holdings2.jpg

Oh, and our remaining forces, which I'll get right to rebuilding tomorrow. Nukes should be ready for construction in about four months, and with our new territories, there are plenty of options for where we want to build our silos. Maybe in Venezuela to hold an interesting trump card over the U.S. and South America. Or Mauritania to hold Africa hostage. Or Israel. Or all of those places. We do have the money.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v619/BobtheMercenary/forces.jpg

[Eltargrim]

This is so much better with some SP2 context behind it. I can't help but notice a little bit of enemy-held territory between your Africa annexation and our occupied territory. Please acquire it, and put nukes there!

I'm too lazy to read through the thread; do we have AMDS yet?

[Bob The Mercenary]

You can only put nukes in annexed regions, and that region in between our owned portions of Africa is Nigeria, which if we invaded there would result in us getting glassed.

As for AMDS, I'm going to hold off on that for a good long while. With the recent war, and us getting WMDs, people hate us enough.

[Dracorion]

Heh. Awesome.

We probably shouldn't do anything that might rub the US the wrong way, so we should put the silos in Mauritania.

[Eltargrim]

I hear you on the AMDS, but I meant that tiny little bit below our annexed region. I think it's Senegal? Yeah. Capture it and annex it :)

[Geminex]

Wait, what? Japan? Israel?

I like this. I like this a lot.

The fact that we lost a lot of our armies is negligible at the moment... We can rebuild. Though damn Nigeria for not being in that coalition of doom.

Where to place our nukes depends on who is likely to dislike us most in the next few years. One option might be to station them in Israel, which'd allow us to target both Africa, the Middle east and parts of Europe.
Of course, the question is whether those countries pose enough of a threat that it warrant the deployment of defensive nukes, particularly since they'll belong to us soon anyway.

No, I think that the best way to use these nukes is to intimidate larger nations that object to our policy of gradually taking over smaller nations.

So... which countries are these?

China? I'm not sure, but I don't think so. We've left Asia well enough alone, and we should continue doing so.

Russia? Yes, they interfered in our Nigerian matters. Threaten them. Threaten them hard.

USA? We're allied with them, but should we turn our eye on South America (which I recommend), they might get annoyed... We can rely on our diplomacy here to keep us safe, I hope... though since we're considering an invasion anyway, we might as well add nukes to the mixture.

Europe...
This is interesting. I think our relationships with them are good at the moment...
The question that is to be posed is "do we want to attack any NATO or EU members? If the answer is yes, then we should be threatening them as well, probably by setting up silos in the Netherlands directly.

What we need to to be able to answer this question is to decide what we want to do once Africa, the Middle East and, possibly, South America are in our grasp. What is our grand plan once we own the oil?

Edit: Actually, never mind. I forgot about ballistic missile submarines. Is it feasible to split nukes into two groups, offensive and defensive?
The defensives are used to threaten Russia and Europe, to stop them from interfering. The silos for them are placed in the Netherlands.
The offensives are stuck into ballistic missile submarines. We deploy these submarines wherever we launch an operation that might require the use of nukes to discourage our enemies.
If we produce 80 nukes we'll have enough to wipe out every european capital or Russian major city as well as having 40 offensive nukes around the world which we can use to support any invasion we want to.

[Bob The Mercenary]

By request:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v619/BobtheMercenary/weapons-1.jpg

As for the nukes, I'm not entirely sure what our long term plan is. I'm just following your recommendations. The placement of the silos doesn't depend as much on who will feel threatened as it does on what regions will be invaded once you piss someone off enough and you have no occupied-but-not-annexed regions left to be liberated.

Even then, if your own silos are occupied by another country, they can still be fired. What I'm trying to say is that we could easily just place them anywhere we want. Then it would just be a matter of dispersion, how many do we want at each site. For now I think about sixty in Venezuela to take out any armies we see gearing up to invade us and negate missile defense systems with quantity. A lot more, I'd say a couple hundred, in Mauritania and maybe a few in the middle of Saudi Arabia to keep that area defended to the north, as the south is completely under U.S. control. And just for good measure, sprinkle a few in the Netherlands mainland as a Plan B.

[Geminex]

Ah, right. I assumed it'd be best to have missiles close to their intended targets, to minimize flight time.
Nice arsenal... though why the hell does that fighter cost so much? That's almost a billion. 15 times as much as the attack aircraft. And what's up with our lacking force of bombers?

[Bob The Mercenary]

Oh we have bombers and plenty of other goodies, but I only posted the ones that are named after forumites and have been built already. Not sure why the fighter costs that much, I'd have to check.

[Ravashak]

Take some time to rebuild the army, annex territories (where possible without pissing too many off), and get the newly annexed areas into decent working order.

ps. And get a navy that won't be sunk immediately, mobility is too good a thing not to have.

[Bob The Mercenary]

Some day in 2047 (I'm lazy tonight)

Our nuclear ambitions have proceeded without incident, but in the meantime there has been some excitement in northern South America.

North Korea broke the peace by declaring war on Venezuela (why does everyone have a burning hatred towards that place?). They moved right in and took over the coast that the U.S. had just liberated from Japan. In obvious response, the U.S. sent in their troops to retake it. They succeeded, then NK sent the rest of their #9 ranked army in and demolished the Americans, taking the coast again. Then for three years after that, the U.S. sent wave after wave trying to dislodge them, but to no avail. They remain at war with them to this day, but seem hesitant to risk anymore troops. I can't imagine nukes being their next option, seeing as I'm right next door, and there is such thing as collateral damage from nuclear strikes (as Japan, I have been hit by radiation from attacks on Korea).

There was one minor glitch, though. A unit of our's occupied the remaining free region in Venezuela. When I saw NK order there troops to move to our exact location, I had my hand on the war order...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v619/BobtheMercenary/venezuela.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v619/BobtheMercenary/venezuela2.jpg

...well, hey guys. How's the weather? *gulp*

Their occupation, much to my chagrin, went without a fight from us. So our troops were just left there in a staredown. Their entire force made the coast their temporary home, so I chose to stay out of that fight for now. Poor Venezuela. They've been a warzone for decades, host to Japan, the U.S., North Korea, and for several years offshore bombardments from China. And despite that and a government that has descended into anarchy, they maintain a population of 15 million.

So...what else happened?

-India opened a weapons trade with Taiwan and started ordering massive amounts of 150mm air defense cannons. I'm not sure yet how China's going to take this.

-Japan (occupied by us) allied with South Korea. Then South Korea allied with Russia, making Japan indirectly allied with them as well. I'm trying to decide whether or not to start sweating.

-The UAE is up to its antics again. They declared war on Mali, but after a short naval battle with Spain off the coast of Portugal they withdrew.

We rebuilt our military to almost three times its original size, spending over $110 billion doing so...because we can (go oil money!). Right now we hold the #5 ranked military in the world, behind Russia, UK, France, and the US (believe it or not).

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v619/BobtheMercenary/forces-1.jpg

I transfered almost all funds going into military research and dropped them into the strategic sector to get our missiles going. We have two designs: the Geminex-I (level 5 precision, distance, and damage) and the Monday Morning (level 3 everything except distance, something we can put together in a pinch). Our original plan called for about 800 missiles, but I found that would take almost 23 years to build. So I settled for 80 of our most high powered bombs. They should only take about three years to complete.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v619/BobtheMercenary/production.jpg

And last but not least, I did some research into our next points of attack in Africa. The situation isn't good. In the time we have been building our massive military, the smaller nations have spent time forging alliances with everyone and everything. When looking at the alliance groups, most of the continent looks like this:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v619/BobtheMercenary/alliances.jpg

The blue countries are allied with the green. The entire march south will take us through groups of three or four allied nations. It's doable, and with our army and nukes we could pretty much take anyone down, but once we start we'll pretty much be committed.

And our meager 80 nukes will only help so much. Now I have to figure out a proper way to spread those things out over our empire.

[Wigmund]

Hold off on attacking southern Africa for right now, let's look at targets in Central Asia.

Specifically Mongolia and the 'stans. A nice country that lets us have an ass shot on both China and Russia if it ever came to that. Besides, the most successful land invasions of those two powers came from Mongolia...hehehe

[Solid Snake]

Aside from the sheer logistical problems of trying to transport land forces into Mongolia -- a landlocked country -- the Mongolian nation also has very few natural resources, is bitterly cold in winter, has virtually no infrastructure or assets, and really wouldn't advantage us in an invasion of China or Russia as much as one might think. (Unless we placed a hugely disproportionate number of troops there, thus weakening ourselves elsewhere, China or Russia would simply take Mongolia before we could retaliate.)

I'm liking the idea of potentially expanding into South America more than I used to, though. It may be time to consider setting up a strong front where we can place some nukes and scare the U.S.A. And South American nations have plenty of resources to exploit, and better infrastructural capabilities than virtually every African third-world nation. If we invaded Brazil or Argentina or Colombia, for example, we'd have much to gain.

[Flarecobra]

Hmmm...what's the chances of getting North Korea blamed for some Terrorism?

[Wigmund]

:p I want some damn Mongolians in our military.

Besides, it'd be little more than a distraction for both China and Russia who'd most likely amass military forces along the Mongolian borders, which would pull forces away from other areas. Them attacking Mongolia would mean there's fewer troops going after the Homeland or any other holdings. And if we're really lucky, it'd open a hole in Russia's northern frontiers that we could convince the US to send an invasion force into while we sit back and watch.

Going after more of South America sounds like a good idea too. Let's take the Andes and strip mine it to sea level. Colombia would let us control a good portion of the world's drug trade I'd imagine.

[Bob The Mercenary]

July 9, 2053

I'm proud to announce the first wave of our Flarecobra class SSBMs have been released, putting us at the #3 spot in the military rankings. I promptly fired our chief finance officer after it was found that the original design of the Flarecobra would cost $60 billion per unit to build and $300 billion a year in upkeep. Instead, I opted for a design similar to that of the Americans' Ohio Class subs. We manufactured ten of the beasts and put five of them to sea off the coast of Nigeria. The distance of the onboard missiles should put the entire continent within range.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v619/BobtheMercenary/flare.jpg

I held back another five near our mainland. I found that to be a more effective deterrent than placing our entire stockpile of ICBMs there. As for the Geminex missiles, I placed a silo of 80 in the middle of Venezuela (don't ask me to remember the name of the town) where they would be least susceptible to attack. Their range should cover all of South America. I also annexed Japan. While giving us 100 million new citizens, they also gave us an interesting location for a missile field. I produced 80 more nukes (Geminex-IIs, slightly more advanced) and placed them on an island halfway between Japan and South Korea. I marked the silos with red dots.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v619/BobtheMercenary/nuke1-1.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v619/BobtheMercenary/nuke2-1.jpg

South America could get a little dicey. Colombia is our best bet to start the invasion, as its only ally is Chile. But, that's where the simple fights will end. Chile is a member of an African alliance that is indirectly linked to Russia (hence the nukes in Japan). If they get pissed, who knows how many other countries could get involved. Once we grab Colombia and probably Chile, we'll be forced to go through a myriad of alliances to take over the rest of the continent, whether we go for Africa or South America.

[Wigmund]

I figure this is a horrific idea....but since the rest of South America and Africa have some really inconvenient alliances - what's going on in Australia, New Zealand and Oceania?

Let's take over the land down under or even Antarctica if we can.
Fire Support Kings
http://roberthood.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/penguin-henchman-batman-returns02.jpg
Artillery Emperors
http://roberthood.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/penguin-henchman-batman-returns.jpg

[Daimo Mac, The Blue Light of Hope]

Oh god it's Chill Penguin. The Reploids are coming! Maverick uprising!

Anyway. Yeah I like the idea of going after Oceania. But I say we start with New Zealand and work west. That way we have a nearby base.

By the way, what is the Vietnam/Korea/Thailand situation looking like?

[Bob The Mercenary]

Funny story. (our save file is still intact, before anyone panics)

Just for fun I tried test firing our nukes at a couple random countries. The game crashed to desktop. I turned the graphics settings all the way down. It still crashed. I transfered the save to my laptop. It wouldn't work properly because my cd drive is shot. I went back to the desktop and tried updating my graphics driver to see if that changed anything. Nvidia's site is undergoing maintenance.

Grrrrrrrrr....

Next update will be up whenever I remedy the problem. Which will be whenever A) Nvidia finishes their work or B) when my new cd drive arrives.

In the meantime, I dropped the tax rate back from 84% to 78% bringing our approval rating above 70% for the first time since the Mauritania war. And I kept our interest rate steady at 45% to compensate for the inflation, but as of right now we're thriving.

[Solid Snake]

In the meantime, I dropped the tax rate back from 84% to 78% bringing our approval rating above 70% for the first time since the Mauritania war.

...We're taking over three-quarters of everyone's wages?
And we're still in office? With a seventy percent approval rating, at that?!?

...I guess this game won't be winning any awards for realism anytime soon. =)

[Bob The Mercenary]

Can't you see? We've rallied the entire nation to our manifest destiny. We are the master race and proper owners of the rest of the world. Flyers showcasing our massive army are posted everywhere, and brainwashing movies abound in our theaters. The only thing we're not doing is hauling off that disapproving 30% to jail.

Or it could be that we have a single party democracy, making it impossible for us to be thrown out by a vote. But, that's not important...

[Eltargrim]

I have a 70% approval rating with a 60% income tax rate.

However, I have the best {education, health care, infrastructure, environment} and the lowest {corruption, death rate} in basically the world. All without propaganda. Beyond that, we're nearly self-sufficient; our imports total less than 10 billion. So a lot of stuff is dirt cheap for my people.

So yeah; taxes aren't evil when they get to where they're going. Of my 300 billion budget, I'm losing 100 thousand to corruption. That's effective use of funds :D

[Bob The Mercenary]

Update:

I think the source of the problem is AVG antivirus I have running on this rig. It thinks the SuperPower 2 background process is a virus and placed part of it in the virus vault. I'm dealing with it as we speak, hopefully this will have us up and running.

[Gregness]

This is obviously the work of covert agents in our borders. The people demand retribution!

[Eltargrim]

Bob: I've had that exact false positive, and it can be dealt with. If you run into difficulty just toss me a message.

[Bob The Mercenary]

If you knew me personally, you would know that I have been fixing computers since I was in diapers. I've done everything to break them and learned every way to bring them back to life. I know about drivers, blue screens, hardware faults, software corruption, network security...everything.

I have no clue what the fuck is wrong with SuperPower.

I've updated the graphics card driver, sound card driver, DirectX, I uninstalled OpenSSH because I thought the daemon might be interfering with the game's process, lowered the graphics settings, tried one nuke at a time, tried it with different countries, tried it on different game speeds, reinstalled the game, uninstalled my antivirus, patched the game...

And it still crashes the moment anyone fires off a nuke. I am completely out of ideas. No one even mentions the problem on the game's forum. I've played it on this same computer for years and this is the first time I've had a problem. For now I'll try it on my buggy laptop just for the sake of getting some updates going. You think it might have to do with Windows XP SP3? That's the only major change I've made to the system. I wonder if there's a way to roll back the service pack.

[Eltargrim]

Nukes (launched by other countries) work fine in 7-64-Ultimate. Haven't got my own working yet, but they'll come.

Here's hoping you get it working :D

[Bob The Mercenary]

Found the problem, I think. Or problems.

One, the game doesn't like to fire nukes from nuclear subs that are in Parked status.

Two, the game doesn't like missile silos built on that island near Japan. It's like the game was built to crash whenever the player did something ingenious. I'm working on updating my computer back to SP3 (because I downgraded it to see if that was the problem) and looking for a save file before the nuke placement.

[Bob The Mercenary]

Okay, here's the DL on our LP.

The game will continue, but on my laptop. And my laptop needs a new motherboard and cd-rom which I will be ordering tomorrow. I don't know why my desktop will allow the use of nukes by EVERY country except our's. I tried placing them everywhere, changing their stats, nothing worked.

So yeah, next update should be in about a week.

[Flarecobra]

Roger!

Hope for the best for ya.

[Geminex]

I shall await the continuation eagerly.

[Bob The Mercenary]

The parts have arrived, and my laptop will be in one piece by tomorrow night.

New update soon!

[Geminex]

Huzzah!

Nukes had better work now.

[Bob The Mercenary]

Installed it on my mom's new laptop. Stationed a Flarecobra-class off of Libya and hit the red button...


http://images.addictedtoquack.com/images/admin/833605429_nuke.jpg


The game resumes this weekend some time. Hope you all are still interested. The only glitch I found was that an all out nuclear exchange with Russia or the U.S. results in a crash. A lower graphics setting will probably solve the problem.

[Flarecobra]

...Why am I NOT surprised that something named after me causes death, and a rebirth?

[Geminex]

Oh fuck yeah. My day just got this much better. LET'S DO THIS!

...Why am I NOT surprised that something named after me causes death, and a rebirth?
Be smug all you like, but please, do not forget whom our Giant Phalluses of Doom are named after. Hint: IT IS ME.