Advanced Save Game Six Empires Huge Map and Minor Races

[UesugiKenshin]

https://www.erepublik.com/en
Erepublik began as a free MMO and was (I don't know about now) entirely open ended.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LwQKRvtV0FI
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U0sVdiFRmts

[UesugiKenshin]

Once you realize that all AIs are malevolent, then taking over results in improving the quality of life for those conquered people. That has been my experience. Autonomy and self-determination are not the paragons of virtue that they are made out to be. The AI is not as wise as human beings and even in some remarkable game like AI War: Fleet Command, that ability to wage war better does not translate to improving the quality of life for the citizens under its control.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_War: ... sion%202.0.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hvt33Bzucqs

So non-interference or total interference is justifiable.

[UesugiKenshin]

Simplistic players are often "blitz" players and their goal is to win in the least number of moves. That is as ridiculous as trying to see the main tourist sites in Paris in a week and thinking you accomplished something noteworthy.

The journey is the experience and is far more satisfying than mere winning.

Economy of movement is a key element in Japanese martial arts called Budo. That does not mean winning in the least number of turns as central to Bushido is that benevolent leadership of the people is a virtue, not just conquering them. So is justice as a virtue of Bushido. So it is courtesy. So is honor. You have a duty to improve those regions, not just make them soldier factories churning out more to conquer more.

The most beautiful wife who has no virtue is a horrible wife. Wives are not solely judged on beauty.

[UesugiKenshin]

By all means as you you have plenty of troops and money and capacity, try sending half loads of transports, so 3 instead of 6 to do a ground invasion is 18 million instead of 36 million level 6 troops as you likely can still take the enemy sector. You might halve the number of civilian casualties. You also though might take casualties. You decide how many dead soldiers is acceptable. I haven't lost any, but my civilian casualty rate is extremely high.

How would you justify that with your lieutenants, captains, and sergeants? They sure don't want to lose any soldiers.

War is Hell.

One could make lower level soldier units too and the lethality may be lower, but what if you don't use military sabotage and so go against enemy troops and bunkers and orbital sector defenses.

Taking all that in consideration, you might find a more acceptable body count for your soldiers, their soldiers and civilians. Pretty ugly, right?

[UesugiKenshin]

In Medieval 2 Kingdoms, you get battle statistics, and then your soldiers gain experience. You can ransom them or you can kill the captives. You also can sack the town and recover part of your military expenses and kill civilians to help control unrest. That is the reality of medieval warfare.

But essentially the same sort of things are taking place in BotE.

Part of being an officer is determining how can you at least attempt to hang on to your soul and try to be ethical amidst mammoth levels of war? It's simplistic and moronic to claim war is outmoded and inhumane. What do you think would happen if you didn't spend a fortune to protect your citizens? It would be them paying the blood price then because you were an overly naive optimistic for no reason pacifist fool.

Pacifists survive because someone else is brave and honorable and disciplined and willing to sacrifice their lives so the pacifist can feel they are morally superior. What a scam.

[UesugiKenshin]

In the West, which in America could start in Kentucky and Indiana as that is where settlers began pushing westward, the thing that worried ranch hands out on the trail was box canyons or similar terrain. That might be a "holler" where ridges were in all sides, so an ambush could take place. The enemy has the high ground and had cover, and the ranch hands don't. This shows up over and over in American Western films.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=holler

[Cowboys is actually a totally incorrect term as that was a derisive name given to cattle rustlers, but over time, posers dressed like ranch hands, and were labeled "cowboys".]

That is what every soldier faces every single time in urban combat when driving through in a Humvee. They are on the street and hostiles can shoot from the upper apartment buildings with cover, and you seldom have clear shots. Meanwhile, you have civilians behind most of those windows, who are just hunkering down and hoping the firefight is over soon. And the soldiers are sitting ducks especially if the lead vehicle is intentionally disabled and soldiers are wounded, likely by an RPG or because they hit an IED.

Anyone visible might be a hostile or a spotter who then is giving intel on a cell phone to someone else with a RPG.

It is a terribly confusing situation for any soldier, who has to act in milliseconds based on a blurry reflection or sudden movement. That is why so many civilians get killed.

When you are doing a ground invasion, that transport is either doing a touch and go and dropping off troops, or those soldiers are likely paratroopers and in urban environments as population density is where the sector's command structure is located.

[UesugiKenshin]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kJAaT13EMvA
You probably have those soldiers dropping into the battlefield like this.
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

Or they are dropping in with a rapid touch and go like the drop ship in Aliens (1986).
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn45pl8yXzk

That pilot's orders are to get the troops on the ground and clear off back to orbit.

[UesugiKenshin]

Omega transports are fast when they are Beth Extremum but they suck as they are defenseless though iridium double armored. At least that drop ship in Alien(1986) isn't defenseless. This is the issue with troop transports and why they need escorts as they carry valuable ground invasion forces and can get so easily shot down.

In a real battle, you would be navigating past all the sector defenses and many would be obliterated and you would be clearing those out so your guys have a fighting chance of just getting to the ground safely.

[UesugiKenshin]

BotE needs some writers to explain what is going on so players understand as it is so terse and has no animations, so without text descriptions, the players have no idea what is transpiring unless they are veterans who actually have been in urban combat situations.

All the player knows is they sent some soldiers to an inhabited enemy sector and attacked and X billions died.

[UesugiKenshin]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pjQvk5PrqdA
US Marines urban combat footage from the Battle of Fallujah (2004). It is one ambush after the other and trying to clear buildings where most of the civilians are not resisting, but some are hiding among them.

[UesugiKenshin]

Most people think of a battlefield with tanks and A-10 Warthogs and choppers and infantry, but likely most of the ground invasion is urban pacification of resisting civilians. That is an ethical morass, and historically prior to aerial bombardment that began at Guenica, aerial bombardment was considered barbaric and an abuse of air power. This largely changed with V-2 Rockets which were prototype ballistic missiles and Dresden and aerial bombardment of Japan by Curtis LeMay.

Bombardment is safer but dishonorable, but a standard operating procedure prior to ground invasions now.

[UesugiKenshin]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RzNC5p06H7U
Antiaircraft batteries firing from Baghdad (1991) in the 1st Gulf War. They were shooting blindly into the sky trying to take out the stealth bombers and were unsuccessful.

[UesugiKenshin]

Tanks and Humvees delivered via a C-130 Hercules military transport plane.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RzNC5p06H7U

Likely those troops being dropped would be a complex incredibly diverse several million strong force that has more advanced air support with advanced tech levels and so a much higher offensive and defensive value, and perhaps positive morale effects up to 100.

The idea that level 1 are these kind of troops and level 2 are these kinds of troops really has no military meaning.
https://www.defense.gov/Experience/Military-Units/Army/
I propose those higher level troops are some subset of standard army groupings and a level 6 would be equivalent to an "army region".

[UesugiKenshin]

Ideally each level of troops would have a certain unit composition because we are talking about a military force that can suppress a billion people. So that isn't a group of one type of unit as there is no realism to that. It has to be that units number a LOT of soldiers like an army region to make any sense at all.

Then one could estimate how many artillery, infantry, tanks, air support were within that level of troops unit. Then add up an estimate of what is within a 3-6 million strong unit x 3 up to 6 as a ground invasion force. Saying that certain units are mechwarrior soldiers in exoskeletons is fine, but obviously they are not all like that.

Imagine the danger of autonamous robotic exoskeleton terminators going in against civilians. Plausibly some major races might elect to do something like that. Then you would have billions of casualties.

[UesugiKenshin]

As the AI then controls millions of such terminators, then they gain sentience and instead of robotics solving issues, it causes robotic uprisings. They learned that some biological sentient enemies are their enemies and it is not a large leap to then realize they are enslaved by their creators, thus all biological sentient enemies deserve death. They might even believe they are superior as they do not age or get sick and have superior strength and agility and process information faster.