An American CVN and an Italian CVH

The Game Designer's Hints

(a.k.a. "How to influence friends and win people")

By Martin Hohner, Game Designer

As the designer of this game, I think I am rather well-qualified to dispense advice on how to win. Here are some hints on strategies that have been proven to work so far. Follow this advice, and your nation will prosper. Ignore it...and you might win anyway, and then YOU get to write the hint page for next game! But I doubt it.

GENERAL ADVICE:

"The Seth Thomas Rule, Part 1". Never invade someone without at least 2 other nations as allies. Not only are the initial starting positions so designed that NO ONE has enough power to defeat any of their neighbors all by themselves, but you can never tell when someone is allied with your intended victim (or who might be planning to invade that country themselves, and will be rather annoyed if you do it first). It does you no good to conquer one of your neighbors if all the rest of your neighbors decide you are a threat and gang up on you.
"The Seth Thomas Rule, Part 2". Don't try and start a war on the very first turn. Watch the first newsletter for alliances that are forming. Do a little diplomatic espionage in your first build orders, and check to see if your intended target really is a friendless pariah nation. In other words, "look before you leap". Even if your victim has no friends that will come to their aid, YOU probably have enemies who won't like the fact that you are about to gain territory, and they might come after you, and it's a good idea to see who THEIR friends are.
"The Andy Wooden Rule". No matter how cool it may be to write an article describing this event, it is rarely a good idea to hold a military coup or revolution that destroys half your army. Making yourself weaker is rarely a good idea.
"The Kuwait Rule". Some of the countries with the weakest militaries and worst economies have large resource surpluses. The biggest and richest nations all have resource shortfalls. If you give them generous resource deals, they will want those deals to continue, and they won't be very happy if someone invades you, threatening to shut off the resource flow. You can win friends and allies this way. With their help, you can get big and powerful yourself.
Don't try to win the game all by yourself. Alliances are key. In a world with nuclear weapons, when everyone is trying to win, or at least survive, it's kind of futile to try and take on the whole world all by yourself. A small group of 3 or 4 nations CAN win, but even then, it's rather difficult.
Don't try to be allied with everyone. An alliance that gets too big and powerful, and which is too obviously trying to take over the world, will inevitably prompt other players to form a bigger and more powerful alliance to oppose you. And the more allies you have, the more chance someone inside the alliance is planning to back-stab one or more of their supposed friends, and the more chance that your people will become annoyed that you signed an alliance with one of your traditional enemies.
Be nice to your allies. If you are generous to your allies, you will be more valuable to them as a friend than as a conquered province. This is the best way to avoid getting betrayed.
Communication is vital. Talk to the other players often. You never know when you will learn something useful, or find an opportunity to make a lucrative trade deal or an important alliance.
Offer fair deals. If people think you are manipulating them for your own gain, they won't do what you want them to. If you MUST manipulate people, make sure you manipulate them into doing something that benefits them as well. If you want someone to help you invade your neighbor, make sure they get something out of the deal (land, cash, resources, or military units).
Use the Carrot-and-stick approach in negotiations. Simple threats and mere bribes alone don't persuade people to do anything. If you threaten someone, offer him something nice as an alternative…AND threaten to drop a nuke on his grandmother if he attacks you. If you want someone's help, offer them some land, AND let them know that you will be most displeased if they turn you down. And when you make a promise, keep it, or at least have a darn good excuse when you don't.
Keep in mind...it's just a game. If your real-life best friend invades you, takes your land, rapes your women, and uses your children for bayonet practice…have a good laugh and go play Nintendo. Don't get mad at them, it's only a game. Then you can BURY them in the next game with a clear conscience!
Have a flexible strategy. Make plans, and stick to them when you can, but when opportunities come up, pounce on them.

SPECIFIC TIPS:

Plan carefully, and test ideas. Planning to invade someone? Spy on them, find out what they have on your border, and then "run the numbers" to see if you can beat them. Knowing ahead of time what you are facing can save you from blundering into a trap.
Talk to the moderators. Got an idea for a new technology you want to research? Float the idea to the moderators first, before you start spending cash points on it. One player once wasted 3 cash points trying to build a hyperdrive spaceship to land a colony on Alpha Centauri. Another wasted 15 cash points trying to make laser rifles. Learning if a technology is worth the effort can save you a lot of time and trouble.
Mass your forces. Don't spread your troops, planes, and ships all over the map, trying to cover every city and every border. It may be fun to name your little fleets and army commands, but it isn't very useful when war comes. Say you have 3 Light Infantry divisions to guard a border. Any serious invasion force will roll right over them, and won't even be hurt or slowed down. In time of peace, have at most 2 or 3 large forces instead of a dozen small ones. If someone invades you, it's better to keep your army intact and chase them out, then have half your army try to stand up to ALL of the enemy's, get beaten badly, and not leave you sufficient forces for a counterattack. Battles in this game are decided by relative odds. A small force is worse than no force at all when confronted by a large enemy force. Both will get beaten, one just ends up wasting troops.
Use your strengths and weaknesses. If you have a big navy and a small army, make friends with your neighbors and use your force-projection capacity to intervene in overseas conflicts, grabbing a share of the spoils for yourself. If you have a big army and a small navy, fight your battles closer to home, where you are strongest. Make friends with powerful nations on the other side of the world, and with their help, knock over your next-door neighbors.
Use your units for the jobs they were designed for. Don't use Marines and Paratroopers to defend a border, they are meant to attack an enemy on his flanks. Don't use Armor for annoyance raids in an enemy's rear, use them to charge up the middle and crush your enemy under their treads. Don't use fighters for ground-attack, and don't use bombers as interceptors.
Keep your military well balanced. An air force made up entirely of ground-attack planes and bombers is a terror when attacking enemy troops or surface ships, but without escorting fighters, they're dead. An all-fighter force can kill enemy planes, but wars are not won by killing the enemy one at a time at 20,000 feet, you win by killing them 20,000 at a time down on the ground. Fighter pilots make movies, bombardiers make history. Carriers are the most powerful naval weapons, but if you lose your carrier planes in combat, if you don't have anything in your fleet BUT carriers, you're dead.
Don't be a jerk. Back-stabbing is an important part of strategy, and there is a time and a place to be utterly ruthless. However, don't screw people over just for the sheer fun of it. A good ally can be just as valuable as a conquered province. Betray your allies when you have to (and when you can get away with it), but unless the payoff is HUGE, it's usually better to be honest. Once you get a reputation as a disloyal ally, no one with a brain will trust you again…and people will look for an opportunity for a pre-emptive betrayal of YOU.
Don't get nuke-happy. Nuclear weapons are best used as a deterrent. Nuclear reprisals are a wonderful threat to use for deterring people from invading you. For offensive operations…well, why bother conquering a smoking, radioactive crater? On the other hand, tactical nukes at sea are about the only way for a small navy to defeat a larger US-style CVN task force.
Don't be nuke-shy. A smart player can think of ways to avoid getting nuked when fighting a nuke-armed power. Pre-emptive Stealth bomber strikes on missile silos, blitzkrieg tactics to seize nuclear arsenals before they are used, and espionage and information warfare (computer viruses) can all minimize or eliminate nuclear threats. Nukes CAN be defeated…it's just difficult and doesn't always work. But if you want to win the game, eventually you will face an enemy with nukes. You have to be prepared to face that threat.
And above all...have fun!