Part 13

By popular demand, I set out the noble forces of Pacifica to reclaim Arcadia and do so with minimum damage dealt out to the good people of one of our original territories. Worry not, Arcadians, the cruel yoke of the Great Plains Federation will be turned aside and you will be free to play among the pine trees once again. Besides, what business does a faction named after the PLAINS have for you, oh mountain dwellers?



Here are the pre-battle maps and such like, as I always present to you, with attack directions and what have you thrown in. I approached by the North, by the way, since it seemed like it was the best area to cluster into instead of chasing random spots willy nilly.







You might not have known this, but apparently Denver Colorado has an important landmark in it. I'm French Canadian by birth, and have never lived in the United States, and I had absolutely no idea that Denver had anything of importance in it; would someone explain to me what this building is, please?



Either way, with the money we saved from not attacking the previous turn, I purchased a few extra Stuarts and some chaparrals to make up for our losses. We have quite the deadly attack force here. I deployed it, making sure the chaparrals covered the Stuarts, on I-25 just North of Fort Collins and Greeley - the plan being to swing through over the bridge, into Boulder and then clear our way to Denver.



This is the situation on the first turn, followed by the second. Oh, and if you pay attention off to the side you'll see the newest toy in our arsenal, white phosphorus - it's really, really potent. What it does is target all the hexes surrounding a unit of your choice with a level 18 attack, which is almost equivalent to being bombarded by B2s, and everything in those squares takes damage for two turns afterward.

Or anything moving into those squares.

It's fantastic for burning cities to the ground but I don't want to hurt our own people in this mission.





At the start of the next turn, the hated Great Plains Federation occupiers sent out a humvee to Fort Collins to pester us. I do not approve of being pestered by scout units, so I deal with it with the glory that is our Stuart Main Battle Tank.



After which, I pull our defensive line back around our anti-air defense. I still have bad memories about our assault on the Dakotas and their defense against the Texans. Those very nearly turned into Pyhrric victories; in fact, if I had done better we'd have a new A-10 Warthog to play around with instead of me having to keep buying up our losses. For instance, if I do well here, I have to start replacing the artillery we lost so long ago.





Oh, look, the Russians have airdropped something right into our starting territory. I was starting to think the bloody Ruskies were favouring the other powers, given how one-sided their landings have been.



I wonder what's in it.



Hmm.



Since we send these toys back to Russia at the end of the battle and are not allowed to keep them, I tend to use them as suicidal scouts. Since I didn't have the money to replace our infantry yet, or even buy a cheapo humvee, and we're considered too mean by the other powers to generate partisans, I didn't have any real scouts for this mission. I'm not really expecting much hostile activity, however, given that the Great Plains Federation has lost so much in the past.

On the GPF's next turn, they send out another scout, which probably pissed itself at the sight of the guns on all our Stuarts. And then they hit us with the same corrosion spray we're so fond of using.



So I sent our BTR-90 out near Boulder, where the humvees appear to come from, only to discover more Russian aid. And what do we get from it?



Another BTR-90! Woo! Which leaves me to deal with that hummer, possibly with more overkill than otherwise appropriate.



The enemy then catches sight of our BTRs and sent out a few Bradleys to deal with them; in this game Bradleys are considered to be 'scouts' but they're deadly enough to hurt most things, even if they can't take much damage in return.

Either way, the BTRs don't put up much of a fight before evaporating. God damned, lousy, Russian dog poop.



No matter, I move up our tanks to the bridge in one giant cluster, careful to keep them backed up with AA because I know the actual planes of the Great Plains Federation are still a deadly airforce. And then I have our Stuarts replace their normal ammunition with depleted uranium slugs - three giant, whirling cannons of uranium death.



And so begins the slaughter.









As our turn ends, more Russian aid drops in right behind us. I wonder what it can be?



I scout it out with one of our Stuarts, not wanting to risk the damaged chaparral in case it was just full of mines. Oh those kookie commies. Turned out it would have been better to have used the wounded chaparral as it contained a helpful repair team or something.



I then went after that lone paladin, which seemed to be all that was left of the enemy forces. It didn't even fire, even though it could outrange everything I have, it just arrived at the front, turned around, and started driving for it the other way.

Not a wise move against my super speedy doombringers.



I then set up a defensive formation and used my now repaired super hornet in a combat air patrol to keep enemy bombers away. The chaparrals would have done a fine job of that, honestly, but the more desperate the Great Plains Federation gets, the more likely they're to use suicidal tactics to deal my armies crushing blows.



Turn over. The Great Plains Federation deploys its reserves, and hits one of my chaparrals. I thought it was going to die but it got very lucky.



I have a spare tank of corrosive spray, so I use it on the bradly and destroy whatever armour it has.



Even with my depleted uranium ammo, it puts up a good fight and survives.





My wounded chaparral goes off to take refuge in the city of Greeley, where it is greeted like a fine liberator. Panties are thrown, beers are had, hip hip hurrah Pacifica!



It takes a second Stuart with DU ammo to take out that Bradley. Part of me regrets doing that, as it was quite a brave little crew in there - I wish I could have just bribed them but unfortunately we don't have access to that power. The EU does, mind you.

As I said before, the 'good' powers in this game are pretty cool in their own right. A lot of games just have the evil things be so much better than there's hardly any reason to play nicely outside of for the sake of niceness - in this, there's some truly great moves.

You know how you can only do one op-fire during the enemy turn? With the right power, you can do infinite op-fires and get an armour bonus at the same time, or repair everyone in a 6 square radius, or even just cause half the enemy to defect until the end of the battle.



And we take down the LAV and mop up the partisans that appeared.







I end the turn with another combat air patrol.



Oh, and then I noticed something:



Look at the unit description off to the side of that super hornet? It has achieved some sort of promotion based on its experiences (Pilot Lucky has been with us from day one and flown in virtually every region). This gives the unit some small bonuses to damage and defense, as well as a few hit points. I'm not sure what else.

Either way, we find a beautiful prize at the start of the next turn. I don't know what the AI was even thinking to let me have a chance at this. It probably had reinforcements on the way up from the South of Denver (hence their CAP).



Since there's no buildings nearby I crank out our white phosphorus and burn most of the land. The fair people of Denver can probably see it from their homes. It's a better victory display than fireworks, I'll give it that.





I then surround the airfield, staying safely outside the white wall of death, and move up the unwounded chaparral to take care of their fighter cover.



Since the chaparral might not down the bird in one go, but is still at full health, I equip it with the volatile charges that end up damaging it but increasing its kill power against something that wont even be able to hit back. My fear here is that the probable enemy reinforcements will hit the chaparral afterward, before I can move it back to safety and repairs.



More fireworks over Denver! Also note how much damage the chaparral took from using the volatile ammunitions. This is the reason why you don't see me use the volatile charges as often as I do corrosive sprays and other neat toys.



Now it's time to deal with that airfield.



Note the pretty white flames, still damaging it. They look better in full motion, however.











and boom



I guess there were no reinforcements coming after all and that the Great Plains Federation was going to withdraw the next turn to prevent me from taking its airfield and destroying all of the air assets it had committed to the defense of their conquered territory.

I took it down before they had the chance and achieved by first Victory Through Massacre (TM).



Now this was a great victory, considering the only two units I lost were Russian.

We welcome Southeastern Arcadia back into our fold with open arms, having spared them our wrath given they are our original citizens.



Now something hilarious happened at the end of the overall turn.

The Great Plains Federation and Texan Republic sat out and did nothing at all.

The European Union attacked the Carolinas and lost its battle.

And the Confederacy attacked the remnants of the Texan Republic and LOST.

Look at how much they've declined.



We're now the #2 military power in North America, trailing slightly behind the European Union which I didn't expect to survive more than two turns from the start of the game.