The Russian Bear Awakens - Again

Share your stories of conquests and leadership successes.

Moderators: Balthagor, Legend, Moderators

Post Reply
catatonic
General
Posts: 1113
Joined: Jun 03 2009
Human: Yes

The Russian Bear Awakens - Again

Post by catatonic »

My previous magnum opus on playing as Russia can be found here:

http://www.bgforums.com/forums/viewtopi ... 54&t=17787

This AAR will not be nearly as elaborate or detailed. In this previous game I made allies with China early on. The game's Spheres of Influence make this almost a no brainer. But it also means ducking a fight and missing out on some unanticipated rewards. So in this game I decided that conquering China early in the game was feasible.

The game began in 2012. I began in late March 2012 to take nearly all of my Russian units out of reserve and march them East to the Chinese border. By this time I had a good start on diplomacy, making allies with about 1/3 of the available nations. DOWing China would cost me a big UN/diplomatic hit.

My preferred method for taking enemy regions is simple - air-drop commando units into the victim's lightly defended Capital and then continue air-dropping supplies to the commandos if required. The hard part is making the Capital lightly defended, if it is not already.

Enemy Capital defenses are of two types:

1. Enemy anti-air units (including interceptor aircraft) that prohibit my transport aircraft from making a successful airdrop.

2. Armored non-garrison enemy units within the enemy Capital hex.

Often enemy armor within the Capital, as well as some air-defenses can often be lured away from the vicinity of the enemy Capital by feigning border attacks. Otherwise such defenders must be neutralized via direct standoff attack.

In the case of China my strategy was as follows:

1. Surround China North of North Korea with a solid ring of armor, blacked up with heavy AA and artillery.

2. Switch on the Fog of War and supplement spotting with patrol aircraft.

3. Stage feigning attacks all around China.

4. Wait for China to deplete its supply of viable interceptor aircraft.

5. Wait for China to deplete the Beijing vicinity of defensive units.

6. Locate or create a safe flight corridor for my commando transport aircraft.

7. Take a token number of Southern Chinese target cities or bases (like Hong Kong).

8. Land enough commando units in Bejing to take the Capital.

9. Resupply the Beijing force via air transport.

Step 1 would create a "killing field" where China could expend its air and armor with minimal Russian losses. Allied NK had already taken South Korea. "Heavy AA" included dozens of permanent border Air Defense facilities, air-strips and supplementary fortifications. All deployed interceptor, fighter and multi aircraft were placed on border combat patrol.

Image

Moving hundreds of Russian units from Moskva to China and the construction of the AA facilities, air-strips and fortifications took from April until November.

Once the war began, Chinese units reacted to deliberately provocative Russian northern border-crossings with heavy air attacks and by streaming hundreds of land units North where they encountered border hexes stacked with a full seven armored, entrenched Russian units - a mixed bag of infantry, tanks and ATs. Damaged Russian units were manually swapped out and quickly replaced with standby reserved units.

Other Chinese units moved East in reaction to Russian attacks on frontier bases along the Mongolian border.

Dozens of Chinese aircraft were mangled by my anti-air emplacements and air patrols. Eventually the Chinese air attacks tapered off - good news for the final air assault on Beijing.

Image

All was going according to my plan.

It was important too take at least some token control of Southern China in order to assure that once Beijing was captured, Russia would be awarded both North and South China. In this case, China had already conquered India, so the Indian sub-continent was also at stake. For this reason I had planned several commando assaults of targets in Southern China - the most important being Hong Kong. I prepositioned a transport full of Airborne Elite II commandos and a bomber in allied Southern Japan for this reason. The bomber was necessary to take out the Chinese warship that was protecting sea-access to Hong Kong.

For the airborne assault on Beijing I staged four large transport aircraft in Southern North Korea. One was full of supplies and the other three were full of assault troops.

The approach on Beijing looked very dicey. I studied the long approach corridor from NK to Beijing - it was threatened by hexes full of Chinese warships. However Beijing and vicinity was free of major AA units. All that remained were some light towed AA units that might wound my transports but were unlikely to destroy them all. Chinese interceptor aircraft cover had all but disappeared.

Image

Beijing itself contained just one armored unit which would present a challenge to my ground-pounder commandos.
I has planned a false feigning Beijing attack by decoy transport aircraft from Mongolia, but their staging airport was inconveniently occupied by a Chinese fighter plane which destroyed several of them.

At a time like this, I often resort to the use of nuclear weapons. I have been known to nuke every enemy airport surrounding an enemy Capital. However, now it was time to "roll the dice", cheat the odds and skillfully guide my attack transports around the ground threats and into Beijing. I guided the assault aircraft between the coastal Chinese naval ports where the enemy warships lay at anchor. As my assault force approached the Beijing metropolitan area one of the aircraft was struck by ground AA fire. The entire formation had to be re-vectored onto the target. However at least two transports full of commandos were successfully air-dropped into the Chinese Capital city.

What followed was an excruciating drawn-out battle for Beijing. The system was working slowly for some reason and the game clock had been moving glacially despite the game speed being set on "Fastest". The target list was so long that I could not track the number of garrison units that had been neutralized by my attackers. This was a highly modded game in which I had nearly disabled garrison units by reducing their attack and defense attributes to a very low level. Therefore when assaulting any enemy facility, the defending garrisons are the least of my opposition. Never-the-less my twelve-some commandos could not seem to make any progress in taking Beijing.

And there was the one other threat - that single armored unit. My commandos did not seem to be able to neutralize it. I kept monitoring their supply level and eventually decided to risk a huge AN-225 Cossack transport to make an emergency supply drop. This Cossack slowly but successfully flew from Mongolia to Beijing and then actually patrolled back and forth, constantly resupplying my commando units until it was destroyed.

Finally the target list scrolled down far enough for me to see that the final garrison units were being destroyed. And then the armored Chinese unit began to face as well. At last I got the announcement "We took their Capital".

My rewards:

All of China and most of India.

A net gain of about 75 tanks.

A lot of additional Chinese combat aircraft badly in need of repair.

I was not awarded much treasury - China did not have a lot of funds. I had a lot of damaged units that needed repair. My losses-to-enemy kills ratio was terrible - about 1:1. I usually kill five enemy units for each one of my own losses.

But the largest and totally unexpected benefit of taking China was that my population increased from about 126 million to over 2.6 billion. Why is this good? My treasury department changed from losing huge amounts of money per annum to making over 10 trillion per year from commodity sales to new Russian citizens.

I would need the additional income because I was now far behind in production levels of electricity and consumer goods.
Last edited by catatonic on Jan 26 2013, edited 1 time in total.
"War is merely the continuation of politics [diplomacy] by other means"
General Carl von Clausewitz - 1832

"Defense: De ting dat keeps de cows off de road."
Catatonic - 2012
catatonic
General
Posts: 1113
Joined: Jun 03 2009
Human: Yes

Taking the U.S.A.

Post by catatonic »

Russian conquering the U.S. is an even larger, more difficult undertaking than beating China. I have extensively modded the U.S. for when I play as it and this gives them many more units and missiles to start the game with. But it gets worse - I waited five years to attack the continental U.S. I started the game in game year 2012 and did not deploying my forces in to North America until 2016. The U.S. had long since DOWed Russia.

In the years after I captured China I worked to lower the U.S.'s Military Approval Rating from 3% to a mere 1%. I did this by capturing Hawaii and Alaska. I also decimated the U.S. Navy's East coast fleet of all of their capital ships. I also surrounded the CONUS with SSBN submarines packed with long-range nuclear missiles. I also took Columbia away from the U.S.

I don't know how the U.S. MAR got so low, but once I discovered the fact, I hoped to lower the U.S. military morale the point where U.S. forces would surrender to Russia. I have not actually seen this happen in the SR2020 game, but it used to happen in SR2010. Looking back it was probably a long and useless effort.

In my direct assault on the U.S. Capital I followed my usual strategy of clearing a path to the enemy Capital city - having my troop transports assault the city with airborne commandos. Just like in my assault on China, I decided to build a trap in which to lure enemy land and air units to their destruction, depleting the U.S. enemy Capital of its defenses.

The entire plan was as follows:

1. Neutralize the U.S. Navy's AA off the coast of Maryland and Virginia.

2. Lure U.S. aircraft and land units away from their Capital at Washington, D.C.

3. Neutralize all major hostile AA units between Washington and the Delmarva (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia) peninsula.

4. Destroy all airfields within 500 miles of Washington.

5. Take Ottowa, the Capital city of Canada.

6. Send in a wave of decoy long-range patrol aircraft from the Russian island of Bermuda to adsorb remaining AA around the enemy Capital.

7. Stage a quick follow-up assault from Bermuda on Washington with as many air troop transports full of commandos as possible.

8. Re-supply the Washington assault force as long as necessary to take the city.

In this case I invaded Canada in order to build my trap there around the border of the U.S. state of Maine. I would use the Atlantic ocean on the East and the Canadian border on the North and West to funnel U.S. defenders into my "killing field". I started my North American invasion in St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada as shown below:

Image

The above screen-shot was taken after the initial Canadian defense response had been neutralized and the stream of Canadian units had been slowed to a trickle. Nuclear weapons were used extensively in this effort - once a Canadian military base or a U.S. airbase filled up with damaged units I would nuke the repair base and decisively destroy the units within.

I used a combination of troop transport ships and huge modded AN-224 Cossack aircraft to transport over 643 tank units from Western France to Canada. Once my expeditionary force departed Newfoundland I captured Halifax, Nova Scotia and began landing tanks there:

Image

Once the heavy tanks had been transported West, I began transporting supplementary infantry, missile launchers and AA units.

Just like in China, I constructed an elaborate semi-circle or laser air defense, advanced radar and fortification facilities to decimate enemy aircraft. The fortifications made excellent sites for Frog missile launchers and supplementary mobile AA units. It was necessary to use the Fog of War and to tip-toe around the U.S. border in order to avoid a premature attack by U.S. units. The integrity of the Canadian border also needed to be maintained in places along the Maine U.S./Canadian border. Taking the Canadian Capital of Ottawa would also ruin the plan by replacing the long Canadian border with a Russian one. On July 4th, 2017 I began my feigning attack on Maine.

Image

Unlike my China attack, here the main defensive line consisted exclusively of tanks stacked seven to a hex. In order to keep the enemy interested enough to attack constantly I deliberately sent sacrificial APCs South into the killing zone to re-take U.S. territorial hexes.

Clouds of U.S. aircraft began to accumulate in Northern airports such as Bangor, Maine, shown at the bottom of the above screen-shot. I over-populated two of my airstrips with SU-37 Berkut jets and used them as interceptors to decimate the clouds of U.S. warplanes circling these enemy airports.

In one funny episode I noticed that escaping enemy Raptor aircraft were escaping Bangor, but instead of flying South into the U.S. for repair, they were flying across the Atlantic to the Cape Verde islands. I stationed ten interceptor jets there to greet them on each future occasion.

By September of 2017 the Washington. D.C. area was clear of most enemy armor and many of her Eastern aircraft had been damaged or destroyed. I tasked bomber aircraft from Bermuda to hit and destroy every major enemy AA unit East of the enemy Capital.

I easily took Ottawa and thus Canada. This established sufficient Russian control in North America to assure that when the U.S. fell to Russia, Russia would receive the entire region, not just the U.S. East coast.

By October the coast and the Capital were clear of defensive AA units. It was time to decisively neutralize the region's remaining air-cover. Doing this was simple - I had my SSBN subs off the U.S. Atlantic coast nuke all enemy airfields within 500 miles of the enemy Capital.

By the end of October the closest U.S. interceptor aircraft were in Charleston, West Virginia - too far away to quickly stop my air-borne assault on Washington. I moved the dozens of troop-laden transport and patrol aircraft to Bermuda. When all were ready, I ordered the dozens of patrol aircraft orbiting Bermuda to head for a point midway between Charleston and Washington, D.C. I also dispatched about a dozen empty transport planes towards Washington, D.C. to take the brunt of any AA defenses that remained there.

Image

This worked OK. I had the full troop transports follow the empty ones in and 70 Airborne Elite II units were delivered to Washington and surrounding cities by about a dozen IL-76MD Candid-B. The timing was such that within one game hour the announcement came that on November 3rd, Washington was taken and the U.S. fell to the Russian empire.
"War is merely the continuation of politics [diplomacy] by other means"
General Carl von Clausewitz - 1832

"Defense: De ting dat keeps de cows off de road."
Catatonic - 2012
Post Reply

Return to “After Action Reports”