Defcon: World Domination
My current favorite game is Defcon. I’ve been playing the demo version for several months now and today I had as near a perfect game as possible.
Defcon is supposed to look like the movie War Games, a seminal movie for my generation of geeks; “Welcome professor, would you like to play a game?”
I of course chose the U.S. for my home country versus Russia, which includes everything from Tehran to Tokyo to India. As you can see in the screenshot above and left, there isn’t a shred of enemy military assets left. I sunk her entire fleet, knocked out all radar installations and leveled all airbases. I then nuked them into the dark age.
The screen shot to the right shows the final score; Russia had 83.6 million deaths with only 16.4 million survivors to rebuild their nation (assuming they survive the ‘day after’. The U.S. only lost 38.5 million and had 61.5 million survivors.
The red glowing portions over America indicate population density. Over Russia, the green glowing portions show their population density, or what’s left of it. Every single city was struck at least once, major cities were targeted multiple times.
Since I always play against the computer (demo version, remember) the following strats might not work well against a real human opponent, so take them with a grain of salt.
- Place three silos and three radar installations across your northern-most border; 1 of each in Alaska and two of each in Canada. Also use two pair to defend the East Coast, Chicago and San Fran (yeah, you really should defend liberals too, its the only way to win).
Place your airbases right on the coastline so you can get aircraft as far out to sea as possible. Use all airbase resources available to prevent enemy planes from flying over your territory (target enemy aircraft carriers very aggressively). The only way the enemy can see your assets is by flying aircraft near them. Prevent that at all costs. I’ve lost pretty badly when Russia was able to swarm aircraft over U.S. territory and pinpoint my radar installations and airbases.
- Keep two pairs of subs near your destroyer groups and turn on active radar as soon as you are allowed. I call these subs wolf packs and their sole duty is to sink as many aircraft carriers as possible. When your destroyer groups encounter enemy aircraft carriers, the enemy carriers will launch aircraft, taking them out of anti-sub mode, leaving them vulnerable to your wolf packs below. Take out as many carriers as possible at all costs to your wolf packs with support from your carriers and destroyers.
Engage and destroy enemy carriers as far away from your coast as possible. They pose a formidable threat to your radar installations and airbases.
- Park 6 subs off China’s coast in two groups of three. Keep them far enough off the coast that aircraft have a hard time reaching them but close enough to reach far enough inland with your medium-range missiles to reach hot enemy silos. Wait for the enemy to launch the first strike.
Pump three nukes into every silo detected when the enemy launches. Is imperative to take out the silos while they’re in launch mode because they are nearly impossible to reach when they are in air defense mode.
- Park a pair of carriers in the Arctic Ocean (actually in the Kara Sea, but I had to google that). Park another pair in the Indian ocean. Use these groups to launch fighters inland to discover radar installations, airbases, and any silos you missed with your MRBM’s (good luck if you did miss any!).
- I also park a pair of subs in the Indian Ocean. Once I’ve eliminated any airbases close enough to the coastline to threaten the subs, I shower the middle east and India with ten MRBMs from the subs. You can reach several densely populated cities from there.
- I always have a hard time delivering all nukes because I spend so much time knocking out radar installations and silos to ensure that all my ICBMs are effective. This time I had 13 nukes not launched, which represents quite a bit of potential carnage.
- After I empty my subs of MRBMs, I turn on active sonar and send them right back to my coastline to hunt as wolf packs any enemy ships I might have missed. I just keep them pacing up and down the coastline searching for something to sink. If I’ve done my job early and eliminated all enemy carriers, the only threat to my wolf packs are enemy subs. And many times I’m able to catch several of them in the initial naval battle.
- Micromanage as much as you can. I break my naval groups into as many small units as possible. I usually only have enough time to break most things down into pairs. I intentionally leave one large group of 6 destroyers just for muscle. I also intentionally use two groups of three subs because it gives me an exact count of 18 nukes to deliver to 6 enemy silos (no room for error, but no wasted nukes).
- You can transfer bombers and fighters between airbases and carriers. This is useful to collect loose nukes on carriers that have lost all their bombers (usually taking out enemy carriers) and also to extend the range of fighters by leap-frogging from base to carrier.
