Turn 4 - Summer 308 AA
A good, if ominous sign.
The Eureka forces are jumpy it seems. I am very happy that they continue to make poor decisions! More concerning is the apparent size of the Lafarar forces to the North East. Also, some of the territory to the South East (“Armed Mercs” land) has left my ownership, hinting at a potential threat there as well.
But first, I am eager to see what my spies have to report about Lafarar!
Somewhat surprisingly, we find that there is no actual city nor built up area in the whole zone. The forces arrayed against us are a large group of mutants, presumably corrupted by living in close proximity to that degraded nuclear reactor for all these years! This puts paid to any plans I had of using diplomatic channels, the only words they respect are those that come from the end of a rifle!
To confirm this belief, I consulted my staff on how difficult it would be to successfully use the Propose Peace stratagem on these Mutants. A roll of 472 on a modified D100 is a challenge that is certainly beyond my staff’s abilities!
Technically, we are at an Unclear status with the Lafarar faction, an uneasy position where we’re not technically at war, but there is also no respect for each other’s borders. At this point however, I can see no point in continuing the sham, so we prepare the relevant articles.
Only my newly appointed Economic Director is against the plan (he has a level 2 aversion to the Fist Profile), and I am more than willing to take this minor hit to proceed with my plans.
The borders change colour to show that there is an active relationship with that Regime (war is as strong a relationship as Peace in many ways!). And I position my Recon Battalion and 3rd Militia to support the flanks of the 2nd Militia for a potential assault.
The arrows here show the potential attack vectors in this turn for this unit.
I also bring the 5th Militia over to support the Northern flank of the front, and their presence gives me enough Recon Points on both Mutant positions to make some moderately educated plans of attack.
The Force to the North West is stronger (approx 18 power) and well prepared to fight (74 Readiness), but is not entrenched and seems to have very low morale (15).
The force to the South East however has two units of approx 11 power each, but neither is particularly ready for battle. They seem to have better Morale though.
In this situation I make the call to assault the South Eastern grouping. My reasoning being that they seem to be ill-prepared, and I have 3 units that can attack that hex, each coming from a different vector, giving a good assault bonus.
The odds certainly seem to be in my favour. Not the bonus being given by my SHQ Commander and the +40% bonus from the concentric attack. I order the assault immediately.
A successful operation, but not one without surprises or costs! Rather than being 1000 strong, each unit of Mutants was actually 1800 deep and we lost both of our elite commandos from 1st Battalion. The buggies of the 1st Recon really show their worth as an attacking force, causing the vast majority of hits and kills. Being able to maneuver well when assaulting a static force is a huge boon.
We also utterly misread their preparedness! But causing them to retreat in this assault will certainly leave us in a good position if we follow up the attack in subsequent turns.
Given this obvious failure of intel, we choose not to try an assault with our infantry in the North West. Instead we settle for sending a scattering of artillery shells their way, just to test their morale somewhat!
We don’t cause much damage, but at least one of the sub-formations didn’t appreciate the incoming fire! I am very sceptical about reading too much about these numbers however, given our provably poor recon in the previous battle.
Whilst these were victories, they weren’t particularly decisive, and I should never be expecting anything so definite from Militia forces. They are brave and certainly very capable when defending entrenched positions, but they will always be outclassed by professional regular soldiers (as was shown by the Independent Buggy group in the earlier battle).
If I am to continue to press the attack against the mutants, and still maintain a reserve to defend against the potential of assault from the forests in the South East, I’d like to raise and maintain a full Brigade of Infantry with their own Operational Headquarters.
As it currently stands, I could potentially raise a Light Inf or MG Inf Brigade this turn (you need to be able to raise 50% of a formation to bring it to the field). But I’d rather have a full equipped group from the off rather than have them awaiting new recruits to fill their ranks.
Looking at my 1st SHQ stockpiles, I can see that I have enough Metal and IP points, but even with increased recruitment from Fivetown, I won’t have enough (5500) troops available to deploy until two turns have passed. To counter this, I use a couple of precious PP to contact the Governor of Fivetown and ask him to raise targets for new recruits to 2000 per turn at least in the short term. If we can bring that large Free Folk settlement into our fold, then their numbers should more than cover this.
Whilst I have his ear, I also assign 52 credits of the public budget to be dedicated to the people of Fivetown each turn. This will assist the morale of the general population and will help me reach the target of 84 happiness that I proposed last turn.
With Military matters settled, I turn to my economy.
My Bureaucrat Offices have finished construction and will start providing resources to my administrative core from next turn. Also, my Economic Council appear to have found hints of something interesting in one of the ruins to the North of Fivetown.
My secretary informs me that my Foreign Affairs Council is ready to start operations. I am offered a choice of Totor Banks (Unaligned, 27 Suitability) and Maia Oldwaste (Armed Party, 1 Suitability). The choice is trivial and I task with focussing on generating an even mix of strategems in preparation for whatever regimes we’ll meet in the future.
Our final concern is a small domestic matter in Fivetown, where a band of Roaming Thieves is causing trouble and disturbing the population.
I choose to donate some of my Political Points to the cause and support the governor in his attempt to deal with the situation.
It goes about as well as we could expect! Some of our stocks were raided, but the issue appears to have ended with no long term impact.
To end the turn, I consider whether to start construction of a new recycling facility in the Ruins to grow my Fuel and Metal income, but I don’t want to risk not having the Industry Points available to raise my Infantry Formation next turn, so I decide to delay.
Turn 5 - Early Fall 308 AA
In their turns, my current enemies seem to all choose to pull back, away from my forces.
The Mutants will need following to ensure that they keep moving, and I’m not so desperate for Eureka that I want to abandon my defensive positions in the Ruins in the South. I am still concerned about the slowly decreasing border in the South-East however.
But first, to the news ticker. No decisions to make this turn, but a few interesting items appeared on the vidscreen reports. Firstly, the Economic Council has a new idea for a building. Something called a “Barracks”.
A useful thing for helping maintain order in the city.
And then, a hubbub arises from the depths of the excavations in the ruins underneath Fivetown! A wonderous pieces of LosTech!
Time to start printing me some new people!
And finally, some new Strategems from my councils. I don’t have a valid minor to make into a Client state yet, but that’ll come in handy in the future, as will the shadow diplomat when deals need to be made. The Medal of Merit will strongly boost my relationship with a staff member, and might stave off a revolt in the coming years!
I immediately bring the cloning facility online in Fivetown and then check to see whether the governor was able to raise the recruits I requested last turn. He has! So I immediately request the formation of a Infantry Brigade with an MG support unit.
I don’t have a lot of choice of how to make up that unit right now. I haven’t got a Military Design Council online yet, so just have my basic unit types. They’ll do for now though, so I Raise the Formation and they appear in Fivetown, ready for deployment next turn.
My upcoming issue will them be finding a leader to lead the Operational HQ (OHQ) of that unit. I don’t really have a natural military leader in my reserve pool right now, but I do have a Raise Leader Strategem that I can save up my PP to execute in the near future (I only have 18 of the required 52 right now).
I have 160 Industry Points remaining after raising the formation, and I commit 125 of them and one of my 4 Machine resources towards building a new recycling facility in the ruins where we found signs of uncommon riches earlier. It will need those resources again next turn (it takes 2 rounds to build and needs that full set of resources for each of those rounds). I don’t think I’ll be able to make those payments in full, but my workforce are intelligent enough to pro-rata the work meaning that it could well be complete 3 rounds hence.
Finally, I push my Militia forces forwards and attempt to keep pushing back on the larger Mutant force.
No losses and 400 kills is a decent return. With a kill for the Irregular Artillery a pleasant surprise!
I’m content with where we are at and allow the round to end.
STAY TUNED FOR THE NEXT PART, "HIDDEN TECHNOLOGY"
