Let's Play Thermonuclear War!
 

http://www.introversion.co.uk/defcon...efcon_logo.jpg

While I continue my efforts to bring my SuperPower game back from the dead (out of 192 countries you guys had to choose the one that was nuke-glitched) I've decided to try another game out where the entire point is nuclear war.

The game is Defcon and the object is to survive until the end with the highest population, while dealing radioactive death to everyone else. It starts out with the Earth divided into six regions you can choose to play as. The only real difference between them is location, but that is a BIG difference, as your proximity to other regions determines the amount of time it would take for their bombers to reach your cities.

After choosing your region, you set up teams or free-for-all, time limit and nuke stockpile and go to work. Over the course of the game the Defense Condition will begin at 5 and work all the way to 1. Only at Defcon 1 are nukes made usable.

Selectable regions - Russia, Asia, Europe, Africa, South America, North America

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...ary/defcon.jpg

Defcon 5 - The set up stage. During this time you may place radar stations, airbases, silos, and fleets within your boundaries. Silos, when in defend mode, act as missile defence systems and when in attack mode they are able to release 5-10 nukes per game at 30 second-1 minute intervals. They take time to switch from one mode to the other and when preparing to launch, everyone else will know about it.

Radar stations light up an area of the fog of war and make defence systems able to track and destroy missiles, fighters, and bombers. If in range, will also discover enemy installations. Airbases are...duh...places where you can launch fighters and bombers from.

You begin the game with 7 radar stations, 6 silos, and 4 airbases.

In addition to that, you start with 12 battleships, 12 subs, and 12 carriers. To maximize power, you can convoy them in groups of six, or spread them out in groups of 1 to 3, although they will be made a lot more vulnerable. Battleships are effective against other battleships, fighter/bombers, and surfaced submarines. Carriers can detect and take out submerged subs when in "detect" mode and not "attack". When in attack mode they can launch fighters to destroy installation, other fighters, bombers or naval units. Subs' one and only goal is to sneak within range of a region and blow it to hell. Everyone else are meant to support that goal.

Defcon 4 - Recon stage. During this time, you may send out fighters over surrounding regions to locate installations. They may be fired on and destroyed in the process. Now would also be a good time to send your fleets towards enemy regions just so that they are good and moving before the next stage.

Defcon 3 - Conventional war. Any enemy naval units in range of each other will automatically begin attacking each other. During this time you can also choose to send fighters to attack naval units and other fighters.

Defcon 2 - Continuation of conventional war and prep for nuclear war.

Defcon 1 - Everybody dies. Silo attack modes are enabled, as are bombers. You may choose what cities you wish to attack and fire away, or wait and see who blinks first. In free-for-all, you can try to make alliances, but I've seen them fall apart as soon as someone's fighter is mistakenly shot down. The game clock is triggered when the total amount of usable nukes left falls below 20%. Score is tallied by amount of units and installations destroyed + population killed + remaining friendly units and population - lost population and units.

Anyone is free to join in. Just need to know how you guys would want to play (free-for-all/alliances) and which region to play as.

Also, I guarantee this won't fail like Superpower did. This thing is stable as minesweeper.

Africa.
I mean I don't own the game or anything, so I can't actually join this, but clearly if I did own this game and could in any way participate, my instinctive reaction would involve me wiping the floor with everyone else while playing the one continent with nuclear-war disadvantages so massive it wouldn't even shock me if the entire continent had no nuclear armaments when the game begun.

Sorry, if it seemed like I was inviting people to play multiplayer, that's not exactly what I meant. I mean we could if you wanted, but it was meant more as a conventional LP. Hopefully my previous...er...consultants will join in as well.

Oh. Your OP almost made it sound as if you were recruiting for a multiplayer LP gig.
Assuming it's just a regular LP, I'll vote for Africa, free for all. Make it as tough as possible and shock the world when we wipe the floor with 'em.

I say we start as Russia.

Russia, and don't attempt to preserve your population, just try to kill off all human life.

When reelections come around, you want to push the data on how many of the enemy were killed instead of how many of us died.

I say we nuke France first. Don't ever trust the French.

EDIT: At second glance, this looks similar to the engine used to make Singularity. Odd, how a game where you avoid humans can be so similar to a game of destroying all humans.

Well, the game goes so fast that we could do Russia the first time around, then spread African culture in the second game. And by "culture" I mean Plutonium-238.

Canada.

Goddammit I want Canada to be feared for once.

The 6 regions you can start as:

North America: Includes all of the contiguous United States, Canada, and Alaska.
Latin America: Includes Mexico, Central America, and all of South America.
Europe: Includes all of Europe except Russia.
Africa: Includes all of Africa.
Russia: Includes all of contiguous Russia.
Asia: Includes all Asian countries except for Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Russia and the southeast Asian islands.

I remember playing this once as 3 man teams- I was Europe and our enemies were Africa, Russia and North America- as in I was inth e middle and got hit by so many nukes my entire continent was green and I couldn't click on any of my stuff caus e I couldn't see any of it.

Russia. It just feels right somehow.

Eeeeh...

I'd probably recommend starting as South America if we're playing FFA (since it seems the most defensible of all), or as Africa if we're playing with alliances.

And what happened to Superpower anyway? I remember the nuke glitch, and you posting something about a crappy laptop, but why'd it end up dying? I'd have been happy to play without nukes. Hell, if you ever wanted to revive our brief stint as the Netherlands, I'd be right behind you. Hint hint.

Russia!

I guess we could try it without nukes, but my mom just bought a new laptop with Windows 7. I'll try installing it on that and see if the same glitch happens. If it does, we'll know it's a programming problem and nothing to do with graphics cards or anything. I've also been wanting to get that LP back up and running.

Russia seems to be the majority opinion. As soon as I get home tonight I'll start the game.

FOR THE MOTHERLAND!

The cold war has turned hot once again!

USA USA USA USA!! Fine Russia.

Fuck yeah!


Fuck yeah!

As Russia, where are our population centres?

And are we gonna ally with anyone? Europe would be favorite.

This is not the right mindset. The right mindset is build some nukes, nuke some shit- everyone dies. Strategy is for pussies who don't have enough nukes.

Ok, that is the first time anyone has ever told me I'm not bloodthirsty enough. I'm touched.

And what's wrong with strategy? It lets us use our nukes more efficiently!

It's a nuke. How do you use it efficiently? You fire it and it goes boom and kills everyone in your target city. Rinse and repeat.

The most strategy you might need is to trick other countries into nuking each other so you can save your nukes to remove ugly-looking islands from the globe.

Like New Zealand?

All the time you spend thinking and planning could be used more effectively building nukes!

Hah! You're all fools. All I'd have to do is develop a missile defense system and I'd automatically win the game.

No, you'd just have the most people alive.

Especially New Zealand.

"The most"? Tricking our enemies into enemies to shooting their ICBMs at each other instead of us, is only minimally different from just charging without any thought or plan and throwing as many bombs around as we can before everyone kills us, which they will. I mean, true that we'd most likely win the game using the former, whereas we will just as likely be the first to lose using the latter mindset, but that's barely relevant!

Seriously, this is a strategy game. We should use strategy. And hell, if we can use bluff and strategic alliances to make Asia launch its missiles at Europe, instead of us, great! It wouldn't be easy (we would require restraint, planning, quite a few risks as well), but it'd be majorly beneficial.

But right now, when I speak of strategy, I'm talking less about a double-bluffing Xanatos roulette (though we can totally try to arrange one of those), and more about questions like "Where do we station our fleet?", "Where to locate our airbases?", "Which enemy is likely to be the biggest threat?", "Should we eliminate them preemptively, or focus on defending against them?".
Cause that sort of thing is strategy too. And saying that we should play the game without it is not beneficial. To anything. Ever. AT ALL.

In fact, d'you think you could betray Russia, and go over to Europe's side? Start giving them advice. They'd never recover!

Edit:
Disregard everything I've just said. I have been...
Enlightened

On a completely unrelated note, please excuse me! I'm off to do something completely legal and approved-of-by-society, and definitely not buy several kilograms of enriched Uranium and then retire to my underground lair. Because that would be wrong. Yes.

I don't care who you're playing, as long as you do this first opportunity.

:dance:

Calm before the storm...
 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...ry/defcon2.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...ry/defcon3.jpg

The only default settings I changed were the number of cities per player, which I maxed out, and the total population per player, which I also maxed out at 200 million. So comrades...what to do first? I wouldn't worry too much about Africa, as they almost always end up getting fucked early. It's Asia and Europe that scare me. They know they can get quick points by gangbanging us, but they are the only logical targets for the Americas. Decisions decisions...

I guess the first things we need to know are where to set up our radar arrays, then airbases, then silos. We also have to give our fleets orders to lift anchor and sail once we know who our threats are and who we'll be hitting with subs late in the game. Fleet and installation numbers are listed in the OP.

Also, you are to refer to me henceforth as "Commissar". Bottles of Popov for everyone upon victory.

Commissar we are to kill the Europeans! Spend all your non-nuke money for defending our capital! Silos everywhere!!

First chance you get, knock out Europe. They'd be the biggest threat.

Thing about Europe is, we can kill them quite easily, but they can kill us... pretty easily as well. Knocking them out ASAP is fine as long as we can do so without retaliation, but I feel like there's quite a large risk that once we start sending bombers and missiles at them, they'll decide to respond in kind.

As such, I'd actually favor an alliance with them. They'll act as a buffer zone, and it'll make them less likely to nuke us. Though failing that alliance, probably destroying them all would be best.

I was hoping we could ally with Eu

Here is a decision chart:
1. Set n=number of enemies+1 Goto 2
2. Are you playing a deranged clone of yourself? If yes set n=n*2 then goto 3. If no go to 3.
3. Set number of nukes required to destroy everybody on earth to l. Goto 4.
4. Set current number of nukes to m. Goto 5
5. Does n*l=m? If yes first go to 7. If no go to 6.
6. Build nukes. Goto 4.
7. First strike everyone.

Shouldn't it be n*m=l?

Other than that, I approve. Sort of. And I'd be interested to see how you handle a chess game.

http://www.hjo3.net/russia_motherland.jpg

Nope. You'll leave yourself open to second strikes.
I play chess extreme styles.