Zed's KAGG TAR #2

[Zed-F]

Anchorage, USA -- KAGG version 1.05.4036

Ginormasaurus, take 2! Note that due to this being 1.05, I don't have a choice of difficulty levels, so this is normal difficulty, by default.

Out of the gate I attack Anchorage and I am faced with a decision, do I want short term cash or do I try to flip Anchorage in one go? I haven't done a T1 city since the 1.03 patch added Defcon threat ramping into the mix, so I'm not sure how this will go except that I don't necessarily have a lot of time before more advanced defenders start showing up. I do know I need power and cash back home ASAP to build stuff, though, so I suppose I have to try to fill up first and worry about long-term income generation later.



I take a stroll through downtown Anchorage enroute to the local colleges, and I soon note that morale is dropping more quickly than I remember from back in 1.02. I seem to recall some adjustments being made along those lines when the defcon changes were made. It's not long before I get the 'ants' message.



So, maybe I don't have to decide whether to fill up or to flip, I can perhaps do both? Okay then. I fill up on books at the local colleges, then back into the downtown core for cash. Plus some purple rocks at the museum, natch. I think I'm getting a favourable enemy spawn draw this time around -- lots of infantry and jeeps, but not many light tanks. After blowing through a bunch of offices and a third national bank, I keep moving toward the refinery in order to gas up. Most of the enemy have fallen well behind at this point, so I don't take too much punishment and my health meter is still in decent shape.

After I hit the refinery and max out on power, the city's morale is low enough that I just have to burn out a couple residential districts, and the defenders throw in the towel. Well done, Gino!

[Zed-F]

Albuquerque, USA -- KAGG version 1.05.4036

Albuquerque has always been one of the harder T1 cities in my experience, possibly just because Region 1 is always a bit more on alert when you hit it -- you'll have already attacked Anchorage, after all. But I have a plan which involves minimizing travel time for the first couple attacks, and Albuqerque is the closest T1 city to home base.

I want to get a Fusion plant built by mid-January so that it will be done before month's end and contributing to my power grid. I also need a capacitance silo so that most of the Fusion plant's output will not go to waste, and I need to clear a plot of land so I have somewhere to put these buildings. To build all this I figure I need to hit two cities and bring back full loads, at least of cash and food but preferably also the other resources as well. Altogether that puts me on a tight timeline that needs to factor in repair and travel times in order for the plant to get built on time.

So, having completed repairs after the Anchorage attack, I figure I have time to train only one thing, so I choose the armour. I need to keep my repair times down after the Albuquerque attack as much as possible, and while I'm not entirely sure it's the best choice, I am hoping the armour will do at least a good a job as boosters would to that effect.

Of course, while I had very few problems with light tanks in Anchorage, Albuquerque seems to be full of them on the day I visit. I have to stomp quite a few of them as I am rampaging through the downtown core, trying to fill up on cash, and slowly Gino's health starts to get whittled down. Boosters would definitely have been appreciated. Next up is hitting the army base, which spawns an attack helicopter to harass me. Better than a heavy tank, for certain!





I am a bit worried at this point that I'll have some trouble filling up on knowledge for this run since I haven't found much of it thus far. But two colleges and the Sandia research labs are on hand to provide books for the needy.



At this point, Albuquerque is only just under 70 morale but, courtesy of all those light tanks, my health is already below 50%. I'm full up on resources, so I opt to split. I'm not entirely happy about this, as I normally prefer to flip cities when possible for the monthly income, and I think if I had both armour and boosters Albuquerque could have been one-shotted. Now, I'll have to come back here later, which means extra time required to do that. On the other hand, leaving now keeps my repair time down so I can hopefully get fixed up and still hit my fusion plant construction window, so I console myself with that upside.

[Zed-F]

Caracas, Venezuela -- KAGG version 1.05.4036

Gino goes home, gets spruced up, and takes another quick trip, this time to Caracas. I know Caracas is pretty easy to roll from previous games, though I usually have boosters available when I do so. Still, I think I can flip it without them. So, might as well hit all the valuable buildings in one shot -- you pretty much need to in order to fill up on everything anyway, since the only resource Caracas really has a lot of is food.





Not pictured, Gino destroying the medical centers in the middle of the left side of the map, or all the houses and emergency services over in that direction. But I did get this shot of Gino stomping a light tank as it left to go pick up some power. Fortunately, I didn't encounter very many of these early on while stomping this map. There were a couple of annoying jeeps hanging around at the power plant area where the left side of the map meets the right in a bridge, but a quick cut through a residential zone and they were left behind.





I hit another police and another fire station as I made my way down toward the university. As I did so, I got a notice that the alert level had been raised to Defcon 4. This didn't really deter me, though, because Caracas is definitely Kaiju-friendly territory.





A lot of the roads on the right side of the map are very windy. There are actually very few routes vehicles can use to get around efficiently. This can lead to traffic jams, and if you know where you are going it's actually hard for anything other than aircraft to really take a substantial number of shots at you. Of course, you do still have to deal with those. And they make such nice explosions when you do.





I actually wound up having to knock down several attack choppers, but the MRLS trucks only managed to get a couple shots off and the tanks never did. I eventually escaped back across the river, and finished up by burning out a bunch of houses I missed the first time around.





I did in fact manage to get back in good order and with enough resources in the kitty to start my Fusion plant on time. Good stuff! Of course now I need an organic processor or two before month end, so I'll have to figure out what I need to do for that, but that should be relatively straightforward in comparison.

[Zed-F]

Wellington, New Zealand -- KAGG version 1.05.4036

Unlike Albuquerque, Wellington is a place I am happier to visit more than once. This is because Wellington has a lot of high-value buildings, unlike Albuquerque. There are no fewer than 8 or 9 college buildings here, and knowledge is the resource that is costliest to acquire by building base structures, so is the resource most worth raiding for. It doesn't hurt that Wellington also has a lot of high rise office towers for a T1 city, as well as a central bank. It's easy to fill up on a couple separate runs here for some quick cash, as well as the valuable knowledge.

I start my run through Wellington this time near the WestPac stadium, which I quickly take out for some quick bucks. Then it's off to a pair of nearby college buildings.





There is another landmark building nearby named the Beehive, but it just gives power and I'd rather leave it alone for the moment. Instead I head straight into downtown Wellington and start tearing down high rise office towers. It takes a little while but there are almost no defenders, due to the usual complete surprise you enjoy when first attacking a region.
I do eventually encounter a light tank as I am about to leave downtown, so far the first one.





After that, I head for another pair of nearby college buildings to fill up on books. I manage to snag a second purpletonium as well. Not too much in the way of glowing rocks this run, but I'll visit the museum on my next run through town. I complete the run with a visit to the local electic utility, and smash up an electical substation to fill up on juice before I leave town.



All in all, a nice quick smash and grab. I even have most of my health still, so I might be able to pay a return visit before the end of the month. And the organic processors I can afford to build as a result of this run will complete before the end of the month, too! Nice.

[Zed-F]

Wellington, New Zealand -- KAGG version 1.05.4036

I have time for a second visit to Wellington before the month is up, I figure. This time I intend to clean out whatever is left, and take over the city. Gino starts in the middle of the bay, so target number one is the museum. It does have a trio of glowy purple rocks that I appropriate. Just up the road from the museum is the central bank, so I hit that as well and grab a stack of cash, then I continue tearing up downtown.



There's also another pair of college buildings in the city center, so I proceed there next. These both turn out to have rock samples as well as books, so we clean out the lot. And once Gino is nearly full of cash, I head over toward the last set of colleges the city has to offer to clear them out as well. I even manage to completely fill up on glowy rocks, for a small miracle considering colleges often don't have them.



I revisit the electic utility next to take out a bunch more of the power grid and fill up on juice, before proceeding along the top edge of the map, taking out houses and subdivisions as I go. At one point I came across a road back toward downtown that had a whole line of jeeps and light tanks, so I just walked Gino down the road and stomped each of them in succession. I figured that with that kind of enemy density, and without having trained boosters yet, it was better than letting them chase me!



More did spawn, of course, but by that point I was approaching the opposite corner of the map. Wellington does have this suburb that's not connected to the rest of this city by any road. This gives AI land units some pathing problems trying to figure out how to get there. Even the infantry, which can normally walk through most terrain obstacles, can't figure it out.





So I stomped my way through that little suburb, trying to get the morale just low enough for those last few points to trip the surrender meter. Eventually, the city conceded the victory.





Cool beans! I figure that month went about as well as could be expected, apart from the failure to flip Albuquerque on the first try. The loot from this mission almost gives me enough to build a research facility, but I'm a bit short on food. Instead I decide I'll build my T2 training facility; it won't complete until next month but that's no problem because it doesn't produce resources anyway. Food won't be an issue next month; I just need to make sure to pick up a load of cash at another city by Febuary's midpoint and I'll be able to build that research facility no problem.

[Gustaran]

Are you planning to do a game on the highest diffculty in the future? I like your write-ups, but I fear you will conquer the world even faster than in the last TAR, so it's not so much a question if, but rather how fast you are going to win.

[Zed-F]

Yeah, you are probably right on that last one -- if you want to speciulate on an end date, feel free.

As far as higher difficulty goes, I'm not sure that is quite a thing for Gino. Higher difficulty makes buildings cost more and adds more enemies to maps, but doesn't really change how Gino plays and wins if you are doing things optimally. You are still mainly kiting stuff around the map. The biggest difference would be I'd have to actually pay attention to defending my base, which would slow down my kaiju's growth even further but still not really change how the game plays.

I think that better approaches for my next two games would be (a) try a different play style with Gino and see how much difference that makes, and (b) try a new kaiju when it's available, which should be soonish. I might combine one of those with a higher difficulty level. Also, the difficulty levels might make more impact on a kaiju that kites less and fights more.

[Zed-F]

Albuquerque, USA -- KAGG version 1.05.4036

Well, one easy way to pick up a load of cash relatively quickly is to finish flipping Albuquerque, I think to myself. I've already done a fair bit of morale damage to the place, so it shouldn't be too hard right? And since we're now into Febuary, it should have rebuilt some buildings so I can get a reasonable paycheque on top of the city's monthly income. I opt to train Boosters before I head in, which I figure should be more than enough to seal the deal.

So I head on out to Albuquerque, and discover there's a fly in that particular ointment. There are a few large office towers that have been rebuilt in downtown Albuquerque but there aren't all that many of them and they're rather spread out. That means I'm going to have to smash down quite a few regular office buildings to get a reasonable cash payout, and fires won't really be able to help me as much as they normally might.



There aren't many unique buildings to help out either. There's a courthouse, but it doesn't look likely to have much cash on hand. All in all I spend longer than I'd prefer downtown to scrape together less cash than I'd like, but at the end of the day I need to be spending time tearing down houses, not just offices. I do hit a college that got rebuilt and a high tech factory that I left alone the first time, so I won't leave Albuquerque empty-handed for knowledge either.



After that, I start on my circuit of the city. I took more punishment downtown than I would have liked, and now I need to rely on boosters to help me get out of this scrape. Defcon 4 has already hit, and I have at least one regular tank chasing me that I need to keep ahead of. Fortunately, the road ahead is more clear than behind, and while I get harassed by helicopters and jeeps, Gino is able to weather the storm long enough for the city's morale to drop to critical levels.



It was a near thing though! Albuquerque again put up a tougher fight than I was expecting, even with boosters helping me out. I'm certainly not sad to show Albequerque my backside for the last time this game.



I came away with a lot more damage than I was expecting, and that'll take a few days to put right. But at least I did get enough cash to throw down a Research Facility! As a rule, you don't need a ton of knowledge early on, but don't let that deceive you; as the game goes on you need more and more knowledge relative to other resources. I figure that getting an early start on research facility construction now will pay a lot of dividends later. And now that my Tier 2 trainer has finished, I can recycle my starting one.

[Gustaran]

if you want to speciulate on an end date, feel free.

Year 2 April

[Zed-F]

We'll have to see about that!