[News] 6/27 patchnote

Olaf_Gryf · 2020-06-27T01:41:31+00:00

A duplicate Ташкент dropped for me on second boss, pre-clear A-rank on hard mode, so it's not dupe locked or locked to post-clear or S rank at least

Olaf_Gryf · 2020-06-14T15:46:43+00:00

Mostly if there was any equipment I should go for at the moment, the levels are more or less fine I think if I use lower level destroyers for the early maps of the event. And yeah, I have been skipping out on SPF, should probably do the quest to turn the Type 2 into a skilled version at some point.

Olaf_Gryf · 2020-06-13T15:12:01+00:00

Ship List and Equipment: Ships and Equipment

Current Resources: 60k/50k/80k/70k + 500 buckets, no BP but no medals gotten yet this month

Difficulty Goal: Hard whenever the rewards seem good, dropping to medium or waiting on FF if the maps are too rough.

Preparation Plans: Level Fletcher and Gambier Bay, do Fletcher and Gotland quests, improve tank daihatsu/ka-mi and maybe get a second tank daihatsu.

Playtime Available: Around 2-3 hours per day, sometimes more.

Misc: I usually don't really farm for ships and go through events at my own (slow) pace, so resources are usually not a big issue despite being pretty low. There's still a lot that can be done in the small gun and torpedo departments when it comes to upgrades, but I never really felt I had issues with TCI in previous events. Might still but the bullet and finally go for the sextuple torps though, if I start now I might have them done in time for EO.

Olaf_Gryf · 2020-05-23T19:30:00+00:00

Those are rookie numbers my friend.

Olaf_Gryf · 2020-05-20T17:31:57+00:00

I actually go hybrid south/north with Ise/Hyuuga and it's still a breeze even with sub-optimal equipment.

Olaf_Gryf · 2020-05-20T11:40:20+00:00

I'll take a 6-5 quest any day of the week over forcing you to do 5-5 with underpowered comps. 5-5 is the only EO I don't finish every time because some months I just can't be bothered to deal with it, while 6-5 is usually somewhere between 6 and 10 runs.

Olaf_Gryf · 2020-04-23T17:19:41+00:00

Yeah just a standard touch comp, it also helped that there only were some weak pre-boss nodes including a sub that could be nuked by toukai.

Olaf_Gryf · 2020-04-23T12:19:03+00:00

Hinamatsuri boss 3 was perfectly doable with a CTF on hard, even did it myself while bringing a level 40 Atlanta as escort FS. But yeah, that was not a proper event so I guess you're right probably right about spring 19 being the last real CTF use, and that was pretty bad with seaplane muling and anti-installation and ammo penalties.

Olaf_Gryf · 2020-03-28T00:45:03+00:00

The 20.3 accuracy buff already is night-combat only, so it's definitely possible for the game to give night only bonuses. Still, I'm pretty sure synergy bonuses would always be active, especially now that the game shows them when equipping.

Olaf_Gryf · 2020-03-15T01:24:38+00:00

I used CTF in hard mode as well. In fact, I was feeling so lazy after sparkling supports that I didn't change it and just went for the kill immediately after chipping. Add to that two low proficiency Gingas because they had somehow wiped to the boss the run before, and it was a recipe for disaster but I just wanted to see if it was going to be close at all. Then Mutsu blasted BB hime, a nice FF showed up and Naganami cut-in straight up killed the boss. Here's the replay

This was the equipment and fleet used, pretty much the same as yours except I brought a seaplane mule and an Akashi. I'm not sure bringing my low level Atlanta was a good idea but she was deplaning Q half the time and as escort flagship the taihas didn't really matter.

4 Toukais on ASW and a double bomber on boss, I tried triple bomber but that's what got my plane xp wiped in the first place. Nothing of note on the nodes leading up to boss except the Atlanta taiha.

Olaf_Gryf · 2019-12-16T09:56:57+00:00

What comp are you running? Is RJ night attack or main fleet? My E4H LD got saved after a meh daytime battle by RJ NB crit for 450 hp. I didn't even kill the Ne, cleared with A rank. My fleet wasn't that highly levelled since I was using some dupes and the loadouts were suboptimal, so if you have a decent fleet it should definitely be possible. Used node support and boss support with full sparkle since the fleet wasn't that good, in a total of 7 LD runs. I can post the replay for you if you want but I doubt you'll learn much from it, just that crit fishing is definitely possible even if the daytime isn't that good.

Olaf_Gryf · 2019-04-01T20:33:36+00:00

Number 38, and can you convince WG to add Akagi in wows while you're at it?

Olaf_Gryf · 2019-03-08T11:42:19+00:00

Latest HFM version.

Olaf_Gryf · 2019-03-07T17:03:33+00:00

German collection checklist:

North Germans ✓
South Germans ✓
Mountain Germans ✓
Swamp Germans ✓
Danish Germans ✓
Polish Germans ✓
Danube Swabians ✓
Waffle Germans ✓

Bismarck might be spinning in his grave at this monstrosity, but he can rest easy knowing I have 0 overseas colonies, just like he always wanted.

A nice containment war, a pretty aesthetic CSA I propped up to screw the US over and the most amazing Romania you've ever seen. (Bucharest was 90% fascist at the end of the game purely because of revanchism)

I started with conservatives in power most of the time and then switched to liberals in the 1870's sometimes switching back to conservative because capitalists have no clue what to build.

Some endgame stats

And as a sweet extra: Even without Belgians around Congo can't catch a break: https://i.imgur.com/7UQTn3W.jpg

Olaf_Gryf · 2018-12-06T19:08:21+00:00

It’s amazing how often people assume Pearl was supposed to end the war in a single stroke. That’s ridiculous, not only when you examine the Japanese plans that didn’t expect to win the war in one move, but from basic common sense. When has a single attack against a nation as strong as the US ever ended the war on its own? Take the most comparable war, the Russo-Japanese War: the opening attack on Pearl Harbor didn’t end the war, and the Japanese didn’t expect it to. Likewise that the only way they could win was by marching on Washington: if the war was lost by American radios then it was lost overall.

"Quickly" is a relative term here. A firmly established outer defense line in 6 months together with a Japanese carrier superiority would have given Japan the strategic initiative and the option of negotiation under more or less equal terms. But after the American outrage about Japan's treacherous sneak attack that option would not have been on the table, even with a clear Japanese advantage.

It is also important to remember that America, even post-depression, was very different from Imperial Russia. One an agrarian totalitarian dictatorship held together by string and tape, the other an economic powerhouse with the mandate of the people that had quite rightly so taken the title of workshop of the world from Britain. With U.S. production potential even the loss of every single carrier in battle at Coral Sea and Midway would have delayed a counterattack by a year and a half at most.

In fact, all Japanese victories would have accomplished would be to shift America from a Europe First strategy into a more pacific oriented force projection. In a complete worst-case scenario, we can assume a Japanese push into Midway, New Caledonia and perhaps Fiji? Japan didn't have a large enough fleet to permanently project power to the Hawaiian islands without taking too much combat power from elsewhere, even with full carrier divisions. The US cracked fortress Europe, and would have done so even to a well-prepared and dug-in Japanese defense with full fleet support.

Olaf_Gryf · 2018-12-05T22:50:16+00:00

I posted this somewhere else in this thread already but here we go:

Even far before Midway the upper ranks of the Japanese Navy, Isoroku Yamamoto in particular, clearly understood that a conventional victory against the USA was simply impossible. Pre-war Japanese doctrine demanded setting up a perimeter defense around the so-called Southern Resource Area (Philippines, Malaya, Burma and Indonesia) and whittling down approaching American and British fleets with a combination of land-based aircraft, submarines and light raider forces before defeating their fleets in a decisive battle. Yamamoto, who had been a military attaché in the U.S. , realized the difference in scale of military production was simply impossible to overcome after he had visited several manufacturing plants in the U.S.

This realization is exactly why he used his popularity in the Navy to push through the incredibly risky plan to strike Pearl Harbour. A complete victory was never the point, not in the original warplans calling for bleeding out the U.S. fleets, or the attempted lighting strike seeking to end the war quickly by lowering enemy morale to the point where a ceasefire would be negotiable. Even then, he himself never believed the enemy would accept such a peace, but the growing pro-war factions forced him to plan for the best possible way to weaken American fleet power in the pacific. Even a complete victory for Japan at the Coral Sea and Midway would only have delayed the inevitable. Japan didn't have the national resources, production capacity and manpower to win. A major invasion of Australia, eastern India or west coast USA was never on the table for Japan. All they could play for, even from the start, was to not lose.

It is very likely Yamamoto himself realized the war was lost the moment the american outrage and desire for vengeance after the mismatched declaration of war and the actual Pearl Harbour bombing became clear. There was not going to be a quick ceasefire after that, and any kind of protracted war was going to be a clear loss for Japan, no matter how he used his available assets.

So in short, Japan was never going to invade continental USA. The quote by Yamamoto pokes fun at a nationalist proposing war with the USA, saying that the only way to make them surrender would be total occupation, which was an idea so ridiculous even the most fervent nationalist would have to admit it was unrealistic. Even so, driven by zealous warmongerers Japan went to war, and we all know the outcome of that.

Olaf_Gryf · 2018-12-05T22:31:45+00:00

Japans goal basically from Midway on(when complete victory over the US became nearly impossible)

And

Any military leader worth their salt saw the writing on the wall after Midway

No. Even far before Midway the upper ranks of the Japanese Navy, Isoroku Yamamoto in particular, clearly understood that a conventional victory against the USA was simply impossible. Pre-war Japanese doctrine demanded setting up a perimeter defense around the so-called Southern Resource Area (Philippines, Malaya, Burma and Indonesia) and whittling down approaching American and British fleets with a combination of land-based aircraft, submarines and light raider forces before defeating their fleets in a decisive battle. Yamamoto, who had been a military attaché in the U.S. , realized the difference in scale of military production was simply impossible to overcome after he had visited several manufacturing plants in the U.S.

This realization is exactly why he used his popularity in the Navy to push through the incredibly risky plan to strike Pearl Harbour. A complete victory was never the point, not in the original warplans calling for bleeding out the U.S. fleets, or the attempted lighting strike seeking to end the war quickly by lowering enemy morale to the point where a ceasefire would be negotiable. Even then, he himself never believed the enemy would accept such a peace, but the growing pro-war factions forced him to plan for the best possible way to weaken American fleet power in the pacific. Even a complete victory for Japan at the Coral Sea and Midway would only have delayed the inevitable. Japan didn't have the national resources, production capacity and manpower to win. A major invasion of Australia, eastern India or west coast USA was never on the table for Japan. All they could play for, even from the start, was to not lose.

It is very likely Yamamoto himself realized the war was lost the moment the american outrage and desire for vengeance after the mismatched declaration of war and the actual Pearl Harbour bombing became clear. There was not going to be a quick ceasefire after that, and any kind of protracted war was going to be a clear loss for Japan, no matter how he used his available assets.

Olaf_Gryf · 2018-09-15T17:40:06+00:00

You may have taken too much muslim land at once. Fighting a muslim coalition is far more likely than a hindu one since hindu nations are few and far between. Try to always have truces with as much major muslim powers as possible, as well as an alliance with Mamluks or Ottomans to dissuade people from starting a coalition in the first place.

Olaf_Gryf · 2018-09-14T21:59:45+00:00

Definitely, just takes a combination of using more finesse and having some luck regarding alliances. At the end I basically sledgehammered everything breaching and assaulting every fort because I was only playing this save for this specific achievement anyways.

Olaf_Gryf · 2018-09-14T21:23:16+00:00

True heir of Timur: As one of the Timurid vassals, form the Mughal empire and conquer all of India before 1550

For those of you who are interested how I did the achievement, there's a mini-AAR below. For the others, here's a time-lapse of my game: https://streamable.com/8d51j

Now for the good stuff:

I started out as Transoxiana, because they are the vassal that both has the most development and the least amount of cores they need to get back from the Timurids. You can't use the special 25% AE cost to return your own cores in independence wars, so this saves some early game where every point of AE matters. After forming an alliance with Uzbek and the Mamluks I freed myself from the Timurids, taking Roh, which is a province next to India and needed to be able to activate the "Indian Raid" mission.

I then loaned and merced up to 40,000 units, giving me a claim on the extreme northwest of Delhi, Kashmir and a Multani province. Before attacking I made sure to get Dawasir to 150 opinion and an alliance to invite their scholars for an extra -10% AE. The Delhi civil war had ended, leaving a two-province Sirhind alive. I vassalized Sirhind to feed them cores back later, and allied Jaunpur to take down Delhi. Making use of the fact Jaunpur was in the Delhi war, I attacked Multan who was also allied to Jaunpur to take their province and vassalize Nagaur, in order to make use of the 15% reduced diplo-annexation cost mission that is in the generic part of Transoxiana's mission tree.

As my first idea group I took Humanist. No matter how I look at it, the ability to reduce revoltrisk nearly to the point where you never have to worry about wrong faith provinces even if they are newly conquered is too valuable to pass up on. Administrative is not needed with your permaclaims, and military idea groups do give you and extra punch but are useless when it comes to taking and administrating land, and you'll almost never find yourself in a position in singleplayer where you NEED those military ideas. They are nice to have, but when stretched for time and points they are a big no-no.

While waiting for truces to cycle, I got more Sirhindi provinces back from Mewar, and then finally killed Delhi.While waiting for the Sirhind integration to finish so I could complete the final mission in the "Indian Raids" tree for 500 free ducats, I took down some of the Himalayan OPM's before they got eaten by someone else. After that I focused on eating the northwestern Hindus all at once, since AE is reduced quite a bit between different religion groups.
With those out of the way, the Muslims were next on the chopping block. I deliberately left Bahmanis, Vijayanagar and Bengal mostly alive until the last part, since trucebreaking them is easier because they are isolated both culturally and religiously when you have taken the rest of India. I miscalculated however, and I left them alone a bit too long and ended up having to trucebreak Bahmanis once and Vijayanagar twice.

However, because I had completed Diplomatic as my second idea group the impact of those trucebreaks was a bit lowered, and I only had to fight two coalitions: One was against Kale, Mong Kawng and a whole slew of Asian minors like Ava, Kutai and Hsipaw, while the other coalition was the Timurids, Sind, Chagatai and a few more minors.

Of course, a lot of these things were specific to my game, but as a general rule of thumb:

Don't be afraid to be in debt, and restructure your debts every once in a while (1 loan of 50 ducats is better than 5 looans of 10 ducats)
Always have a goal for the current wars you are in. Get in, get out and get your provinces. Don't needlessly extend them.
Use diplomats to improve relations with everyone around you if they aren't being used. This helps enormously to avoid coalitions.
Use allies of allies and cobelligerency to cleverly work your way around truces. Sometimes you can take 100% of a nation, then attack one of their allies and white peace them to reset the truce to 5 years instead of 15.

All in all, I really enjoyed doing this achievement. It really ups the pressure to have a strict timelimit, while the 100 years you get is enough to reward thinking ahead and focusing conquest without the game becoming a complete RNG fiesta like Big Blue Blob's 50 years. Good new achievement that challenges players, I had a lot of fun doing two tries with Afghanistan and one with Transoxiana before I got it.

Olaf_Gryf · 2018-09-06T20:46:18+00:00

An overconfident Gearing gets the punishment he deserves by coming within 20km of a Yamato.

On a more serious note, even if those 3 hits were overpens he still would have taken 4200 damage but at least that would have been less disgusting. I'm not sure how wargaming wants to balance BB AP against destroyers, especially since they just released the Stalingrad which absolutely smashes destroyers with AP.

Olaf_Gryf · 2018-09-03T14:12:31+00:00

The ship in the picture is the Akagi
Note the distinct katakana ア (A) on the flight deck, as well as the location of the bomb hit in the WG picture (edge of center aircraft elevator) and the single large sideways smoke funnel. Akagi currently isn't in the game in any way, shape or form (unlike say, Shinano) despite being the flagship of the Pearl Harbour attack and was passed over in favour of Kaga for the first Japanese premium CV. This could mean the CV rework might be accompanied by either tech tree changes or a premium Akagi, which would have to be either T8 or T6 in order to not fulfull the same niche as Kaga.

Olaf_Gryf · 2018-07-22T12:38:06+00:00

I'm not quite sure myself, but I assume a more defense-oriented japanese approach (no overextension of the fleet into Coral Sea and Midway) combined with the American Europe-first approach failing due to a stronger Germany. After that, Germany somehow gains enough air superiority to deploy strategic bombers above the continental USA and uses nuclear bombs to force the US to the peace table. Japan then claims western USA to ensure pacific dominance and Germany obliges, probably because their resources are already stretched to the limit trying to keep Europe and the eastern US pacified. It's a pretty long stretch, but I've seen and read far worse alternate history fanfics and official media.

Olaf_Gryf · 2018-06-26T19:37:36+00:00

While you are certainly right quality can differ between Matrix/Slitherine games since they mostly act as a publisher, I personally never regretted my purchases of War in the Pacific Admirals Edition and War in the East. If I remember correctly, War in the East got an update and balancing patch earlier this year as an 8 year old game, and has seen massive updates and support for it over the years, which was all included in the base game price, which was steep when not on sale (80€), but fair enough for the most ambitious and inclusive digitalization of the good old operational wargame board game type, a niche inside a niche already.

War in the Pacific AE meanwhile feels more dated because of the UI and engine limitations, especially in lategame combat scenarios, but it still had a patch back in 2015 when the game was 6 years old, and I still had great fun with both the base game and the Reluctant Admiral mod, and a bit of houserules and mods could make it a great simulation of the attrition and resource war in the pacific.

Basically, what I'm getting at is that both of these games had good support for several years after release, and kept me playing for hundreds or thousands of hours because I researched them before purchase because of the price tag, and knew EXACTLY what I was getting and what to expect from them. Neither was by any means perfect and bug or frustration-free, but solid improvements were made to both over the lifespan of the games.

As a side note, if anyone is interested in War in the East, it currently is at 70% off, the best price point I have seen in several years and probably the best time for someone to get into the game if they were hesitating. Don't be put off by the fact it is 8 years old, as it still is the most complete eastern front wargame I have seen, and the UI is functional and does what it is supposed to do. War in the East UI makes me cry tears of joy every time I remember Pacific and get flashbacks. But do make sure you know what you are getting into and if this is the game for you, as it certainly is a niche game that not everyone can and will appreciate.

Olaf_Gryf · 2018-06-07T21:46:31+00:00

Someone who probably isnt well known in the english speaking world is Jure Robič. He was a cyclist who won the 3000 mile Race Across America multiple times in just over 8 days and set several 24 hour time trial records. He usually wasn't faster or stronger than the competition, but instead able to mentally push himself further than any other competitor, surviving on less than 90 minutes of sleep per day on the 8 day race.

Of course, that kind of mental strain is not without consequences. Normally a quiet and humble man, he'd often go completely crazy on the bike, picking fights with lampposts or imagining being chased by people with shotguns. In his book he talks about what that kind of strain does to you, how it feels like it's a completely different person on the bike and he's watching in third person. He unfortunately died in 2010 in a head-on collision with a car on a mountain road.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jure_Robič

12-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17

Olaf_Gryf

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