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Which nation ended as the strongest? I don't care about who was allied to the winner, just who won!
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catalunia or germany were always the strongest nations that could have propably opposed the african brotherhood even standing alone... I think Catalunia had most IC IRC
Congratulations then Catalunya for winning the Great Game. To all the other losing players, better luck next time! And personally I root for KOM to win one day, he is due.
I would say we each played to our given styles and each suffered for it. When it came to financial choices you have always tended to favor the factories and I the troops - even back in early eu3 when we had disposable cash above and beyond the immediate needs you would tend to put it in a uni and I would prefer to build ships or armies above forcelimit or do something else military-minded.
In v2, you built up a large industry. Then when resource starvation set in the industry sucked away all your money and nothing was left for paying the regiments or building the kind of fleet that Kongo's status as a colonial Great Power required. Meanwhile Ethiopia maintained a world-class fleet and an army of quality regiments, but industry (and related critical issues such as population migration) suffered constantly as a result.
The uniting factor though was coal (and timber to a lesser extent), because powers possessing large stocks, critically Germany, could afford to do both and not being able to match that led directly to Africa's increasing marginalization from the power politics of continental Europe. By the latter periods of v2 as resources became ever more and more bottlenecked we got to the point where Germany could even outfleet Ethiopia and outindustry Kongo at the same time.
Anyway, for the peanuts - Fasq is not exaggerating. The economic situation in Africa in v2 was devastating. Vast swathes of the continent ended v2 (and thus entered AOD) without even modern railroads, for nothing but lack of resources as I'd had the techs for fifty years. Not a situation Europe had to deal with! And that's just the tip of the iceberg... I've said it all before, though.
If there is one advice I would give to a future player on that continent - start getting offcontinent coal areas ASAP. By the time Fasq and I realized how badly we would need it it was too late. Don't put it off for the future, don't count on the converter to sort things out - start acquiring future coal in 1399 and never look back.
In other words; I can't say whether Golle and Jodokus might have done better with what they had - they had a couple decaying superpowers with a fair number of remaining resources, and they might or might not have pulled it out in the first war - but the seeds for the decline were planted under Fasq and I, in v2, and even more so in eu3 just by failing to foresee the scale of the v2 resource problem. By my rough estimates Ethiopia's relative share of the world economy fell by over 50% over the course of v2 and its size relative to its key rival in Germany fell to somewhere around 33%.
By contrast Fivoin had been placing a stranglehold on continental European resources for seven or eight centuries (and he managed to consolidate his hold yet further). Oddman didn't have it all in place going in, but he moved decisively in v2 to secure the bulk of North American industrial resources. They were overall both a lot better prepared for the economics of v2 and duly emerged as the global superpowers at the end of it. Good planning, more than anything else except possibly good diplomacy, always pays off.
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You're making me blush! Thank you for the kind words.
There was planning, yes, but I did not secure the main North American coal areas in EU3; I did so with the partitioning of England, early on in V2.
Also, I had coal in Iberia. South America is entirely coal-less. We also agreed to share German coal, so coal was never really an issue - but all my North American expansion was aimed at coal, yes. Do not underestimate its importance.
On a related note, thank dog for the Donbass
Yeah, mistyped. I meant to say "Oddman didn't have it all in place going in [to v2], but he moved decisively in v2 to secure the bulk of North American industrial resources." It's early in the morning
Touching also on Asia for a moment, since Fasq mentioned that we did largely succeed in destroying the Far Eastern threat to Africa in v2:
I anticipated that destroying China would long-term lower the Eastern threat to Ethiopia - actually worked even more thoroughly than I expected. I was expecting a Mongolia and Japan that would emerge roughly equal to one another. I think of all the nations Mongolia missed the most opportunity in v2. It had all the makings of a superpower - coastline, huge population, massive industrial resources - and none of the parties to make good use of it.
I anticipated that destroying China would long-term lower the Eastern threat to Ethiopia - actually worked even more thoroughly than I expected. I was expecting a Mongolia and Japan that would emerge roughly equal to one another. I think of all the nations Mongolia missed the most opportunity in v2. It had all the makings of a superpower - coastline, huge population, massive industrial resources - and none of the parties to make good use of it.
Resources were never proplem for us. Our stockpiles where redicilously overblowed for many years of wars against everyone else. AoD is not economy game, its a wargame.
AoD's and the mods redicilous long building times were our biggest proplem.. And mistakes of the early builques in ethiopia particulary. Since we were the underdogs and knowing how certain type of players tends to play certain type of game in hoi phase, our only change to crush the perma-alliance was to strike first and strike fast. For that we would have needed all the troops and planes and specially ships we could have gotten. We didn't. Ethiopia had only build few tanks, basicly no airforces and completely useless flotilla of level IV battleships WHITOUT ANY BRIGADES of whatsoever.
we had to crush germany, we needed tanks for it, so we had to take risk and ignore naval build up and push for the tanks... we didn't manage to bring enough of them to get the advantage over Germany's numerical superiority before the intial incompetence of the perma-alliance's naval actives were overcome, and they could start making landings against us.
IF we would have had that same ammount of IC that were put on those battleships, to be put on similar level carriers, we would have whiped german fleets away from the medditerrain in the first war, that would have demanded catalunian naval units to contest us there as well, and even if catalunia would have won, we would have imposed it lot of damage to it, and who knows what would have happened to the Japanese fleet afterwards?... lots of ifs, but thats the art of hindsight
And I don't blame Fasq and Irsh for what they did or did not do in Vicky2. It didn't loose the game for africa. Catalunia and Germany never fougth against each others so that they would gain lands from each others was the ultimate reason why everyone else lost... And africa failed to alter that...I don't know much what took place in vicky outside of eating china, but If I would have then played africa, I would have focused all my energy to destroy the catalunia-german perma-NAP/alliance. I don't know why Irsh and Fasq failed so utterly in this, was it becouse of My own desperate attempts to break the very african perma-alliance in eu3, when it together with perma-allying croatia was destroying Persia..., or what, but in Hoi phase, 600 IC nation is not undefeatable. two of those in perma-allied are...
Only if Elcy and Mayi would have remained in the game. Back when Africa was the BLOB, and even allied to catalunia, those two were able to defeat it...
Or if I as a Persia would have been able to pledge to the Africans and participate in that important role of eastern vanguard that Punjab did for us in AoD...who knows?
AoD's and the mods redicilous long building times were our biggest proplem.. And mistakes of the early builques in ethiopia particulary. Since we were the underdogs and knowing how certain type of players tends to play certain type of game in hoi phase, our only change to crush the perma-alliance was to strike first and strike fast. For that we would have needed all the troops and planes and specially ships we could have gotten. We didn't. Ethiopia had only build few tanks, basicly no airforces and completely useless flotilla of level IV battleships WHITOUT ANY BRIGADES of whatsoever.
we had to crush germany, we needed tanks for it, so we had to take risk and ignore naval build up and push for the tanks... we didn't manage to bring enough of them to get the advantage over Germany's numerical superiority before the intial incompetence of the perma-alliance's naval actives were overcome, and they could start making landings against us.
IF we would have had that same ammount of IC that were put on those battleships, to be put on similar level carriers, we would have whiped german fleets away from the medditerrain in the first war, that would have demanded catalunian naval units to contest us there as well, and even if catalunia would have won, we would have imposed it lot of damage to it, and who knows what would have happened to the Japanese fleet afterwards?... lots of ifs, but thats the art of hindsight
And I don't blame Fasq and Irsh for what they did or did not do in Vicky2. It didn't loose the game for africa. Catalunia and Germany never fougth against each others so that they would gain lands from each others was the ultimate reason why everyone else lost... And africa failed to alter that...I don't know much what took place in vicky outside of eating china, but If I would have then played africa, I would have focused all my energy to destroy the catalunia-german perma-NAP/alliance. I don't know why Irsh and Fasq failed so utterly in this, was it becouse of My own desperate attempts to break the very african perma-alliance in eu3, when it together with perma-allying croatia was destroying Persia..., or what, but in Hoi phase, 600 IC nation is not undefeatable. two of those in perma-allied are...
Only if Elcy and Mayi would have remained in the game. Back when Africa was the BLOB, and even allied to catalunia, those two were able to defeat it...
Or if I as a Persia would have been able to pledge to the Africans and participate in that important role of eastern vanguard that Punjab did for us in AoD...who knows?
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I doubt the latter statement as the amount of IC that Ethiopia spent on those battleships was zero. Although they were level 7 (SHBB) not level 4. They were my converted fleet from v2, which is also the reason they were only partly brigaded (I had planned to put more brigades on them, but with the whole thing about Kongo under Boney losing a lot of its IC events and having a sudden insatiable hunger for Ethiopian supply shipments due to its shortened IC, my early build got a bit disorganized and I lost track of a few things. I did tell Jod that they needed firecontrols before they should be used though!)
Honestly, though, I didn't lay down a single keel the entire time I was in control in AOD. There were other priorities for my IC and I pretty much assumed that any war against the West would be defensive at sea and have to be won on land.
I stand correct then....but how could you convert ships from vicky <1936 technology into 1938/1941 techonology?
that said, I begun to be more and more certain that we didn't have any change then to realistically win or survive the game... was there BTW any feelings during the conversion from vicky, that it was...well basicly pointless, knowing the results of the conversion and IC distribution?
that said, I begun to be more and more certain that we didn't have any change then to realistically win or survive the game... was there BTW any feelings during the conversion from vicky, that it was...well basicly pointless, knowing the results of the conversion and IC distribution?
With the tech buy you got a certain amount to spend and techs cost more if fewer vanilla nations had them or if they were ahead of time. I think I gave up on buying a few things that aren't vital to have in 1936 and can safely be researched in 37 or 38, like initial rockets or nuclear stuff, to get ahead of time battleships and interceptors.
Japan had a larger battleship fleet at conversion (18 to my 14) so I felt I needed the technology edge to keep him from contemplating betraying me. As long as I had the SHBBs and kept casually talking occasionally in the chat about how battleships would always beat carriers in the Indian Ocean monsoons I felt fairly secure he wouldn't turn on me. Otherwise... well, you saw what he did the instant they got sunk.
And looking at my early saves it looks like from the beginning until the last save I had in early 1939 it looks like the following was the major production:
-~30 capital ship brigades (secondary armament in 6x6 almost complete; was going to follow up with fire control (which had later tech date) once the first serial finished)
-~30 infantry brigades (mainly engineers, one for each stack of beach guards with artillery brigades I converted with on the others)
-72 infantry divisions (long serials still in progress, all got brigaded with art)
-4 mot-SPart divisions (one long serial going; I was going to keep groups of 3 here and there behind the beaches to form a mobile reserve against landings while leaving the plain infantry on VOV)
-2 interceptor divisions (recently begun long serial)
-28 base IC (with the last 14 set to finish in a week)
-infrastructure in the key Egypt corridor (necessary for divisional ESE due to lack of starting infra due to lack of v2 railroads due to lack of coal, and an inland capital with poor infra causes terrible ESE in AOD
)-maybe 12 or so SPART to brigade up my starting motorized and light armored
-I had recently finished researching medium armor (ahead of time is harder in AOD, so it was kind of late) and laid down two serials. Retooling was almost over but none had finished yet.
-9 transports (I did lay down a 99 serial of these, so I guess I built a few ships after all... forgot about em).
-One level of rocket test site. I don't remember why I built this... maybe I had bad rocket teams and was worried about turbojets.
That's about what I produced. I'd been timing armor to research lvIII medium about when my IC finished... a couple things interrupted such as Kongo not choosing its IC in events and me having to send them tons of supplies to stop them starving, so it ended up being delayed a bit.
In same three years I also moved hawk six times (from one click dove to full hawk), interventionism five times (from one shy of full isolationist to just past halfway) and I got an event that moved me a couple towards standing army. I had a custom head of state to make that easier (everyone else went for the low hanging fruit HOS, so that was a big leg up).
I think it was a fairly good buildup overall given Ethiopia's tight resources compared to the superpowers. Obviously I would have liked more, but I just didn't have the IC for fancy things like carriers. Long-term I was hoping to afford six or nine of them around 1941 when I could switch from armored to cheaper mech-inf divisions - I was planning to only build around 27 or so armor total for countering enemy spearheads, and mostly rely on mech-inf after 42 for affordability reasons.
As for the second question... it was obvious from the get go that if Fiv and Odd remained teamed up against us it would be a gamble. I had some tactical/gameplay tricks I wanted to try to get some sort of edge (Eth's superior sliders were a result of one of them that I don't think anybody else ever caught on to), but obviously the odds were against that if their alliance held together. At the beginning of the game Fiv alone had nearly as much IC as both Africans put together. I had several different diplomatic routes in mind, one of which was pretending to switch sides and selling info to Dano to try to get him to join us, one of which was giving up all hope of victory and actually switching sides just to be on the winning team, and one of which was trying to split Germany and Russia. I probably would have tried to keep all of those lines in the water at once, but as it happened I didn't really have time to properly pursue any of them due to my work schedule. And they were all long shots if the German-Spanish alliance stayed. They got most of the way towards victory already in mid/late v2.
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well...this is naturally seccond hand info from jodokus, I never bothered to test with ethiopia that much, but In ligth of what we discussed, and what I feel as underdogs should do, was that Build air... Ethiopia had considerable maritime intresses, so naval bombers would have been essential to be on long, long serial of production, rigth from the start. Also, Tactical bombers would have needed to be the most numerous bombers, and the total of these by 1941 should have needed to be around 30-40, while the interceptor ammount of 40-60 (assuming the rest would have known how to play air...the post-game stat showed that africa would have anal-raped their air, had we ever been able to use the air from our own airfields)...
Between the first and seccond war, I spam builded over 70 interceptors thinking that German and Catalunia would be also building Air as you do in MP games...for basicly vain, since ethiopia did not have IC to spam airfields in Yugoslavia and Blayne didn't focus his irrelevant IC to build airfields in Poland. Had I used that same IC during the inter-war year for something else....(Ethiopia produced 36 tanks during this intervall, for clarity's sake)
As for diplomacy, I think only road would have been the one we took. Dano was lost cause, he wouldn't have ever joined anything that was needing to take risk, and germany and catalunia could have not been able to be thrown against each others. What I read from their private forums, they still planned to destroy africa, so attacking east or north instead would have not been any more futile than direct confontration with germany.
Perhaps ethiopia should have sold all of his asian posessions to Japan in exhange of full commitment to the alliance and to have Japan played by someone else than falador from the start MIGTH have been one of those things that MIGTH have give that little bit we lacked in crushing them in the first war....atleast it would have allowed Jodokus not to be so damn obsessive on hanging onto his asian posessions that perhaps hintered us the 30 divisions in Australia during the last war
Between the first and seccond war, I spam builded over 70 interceptors thinking that German and Catalunia would be also building Air as you do in MP games...for basicly vain, since ethiopia did not have IC to spam airfields in Yugoslavia and Blayne didn't focus his irrelevant IC to build airfields in Poland. Had I used that same IC during the inter-war year for something else....(Ethiopia produced 36 tanks during this intervall, for clarity's sake)
As for diplomacy, I think only road would have been the one we took. Dano was lost cause, he wouldn't have ever joined anything that was needing to take risk, and germany and catalunia could have not been able to be thrown against each others. What I read from their private forums, they still planned to destroy africa, so attacking east or north instead would have not been any more futile than direct confontration with germany.
Perhaps ethiopia should have sold all of his asian posessions to Japan in exhange of full commitment to the alliance and to have Japan played by someone else than falador from the start MIGTH have been one of those things that MIGTH have give that little bit we lacked in crushing them in the first war....atleast it would have allowed Jodokus not to be so damn obsessive on hanging onto his asian posessions that perhaps hintered us the 30 divisions in Australia during the last war
I was actually planning on going with the longer ranged ballistic missiles in the later years (43-44) partly because of the low airfields. (In other news, I just remembered why I built that rocket test site!
) Less airfield intensive. But yeah, the airfield distribution by the converter was less than ideal.And yeah, I daydreamed a bit about having enough IC to build more bombers. It's very difficult to actually sink ships with them in AOD (massive nerf from their arma powers) but still would have helped a lot...
And yeah, too many damn beaches in Oceania.
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the airport distribution was not that bad, had we been forced to figth on our own ground... but for Croatia, poland and Russia it was bad... In middle-east and North Africa we had decent coverage, even better than Vanilla hoi that I was used to.
Naval bombers indeed were not so powerfull as in Arma, but we had 5 of them totall (two of which falador then got killed by recless use)... 40 turbojet naval bombers would have been different story I guess, and something Jodokus was talking about, had we been able to get out from the war in way that the game would have still continued.
Naval bombers indeed were not so powerfull as in Arma, but we had 5 of them totall (two of which falador then got killed by recless use)... 40 turbojet naval bombers would have been different story I guess, and something Jodokus was talking about, had we been able to get out from the war in way that the game would have still continued.
Yeah. The converter distributed airfields based on where armies happened to be standing at the moment of conversion, so the ME and North Africa (which was basically my giant army staging ground through all of v2 as it was near Persia and had high supply limits) had a lot, as did places like the German border with Croatia. It's why you'll be scrolling around and there will be like five hundred airfields all close together and then you look at Africa and there's like a single airfield in the entire Ethiopian realm south of Somalia.
And since the AI was marching around the Russian and Croatian armies before conversion god only knows where theirs ended up.
It was something that was brought up a couple times, but it fell through the cracks I imagine. The downside of having KOM slave away all alone for our amusement while we yell at him in chat to do things a dozen different ways.
I blame the converters never been in the tuesday/monday Hoi games where you really first time begun to appreciate airpower
Heh. I think those eight Canadian tac-bombers from the your first USSR try bombed roughly sixty Axis divisions to death before the Germans finally caught them.