OPERATION: STEEL PANDA by Von Karajan


Following on the success of Operation Gargamojo, next round we can keep what worked and tweak what could work better. The plan is to have 3 main teams plus a small intel contingent. The goal is to have nearly the entire force tasked with nuking, have a substantial early ranking force, and more consistent ranking pressure.

Team 1(50%): MidNuker Force
Team 1 will again be the bread and butter team. They will play a midnuking strat that focuses on steady teching while maintaining maxed platoons and full employment in order to take and hold land effectively. The best Team 1 players should be out on the same day as the Axis speed nukers, but they should be 3 nuke targets and with enough units to sell off to fire a nuke or two immediately when they are finished teching. Further, their extra land and remaining platoons should give them a good shot to maintain themselves as 3 nuke targets and thus have enough land to produce more nukes than even veteran Italian speed nukers.

Team 2(25%): Early Rank Force
Acceptable Strats: MegaUber, Lightly Teched Russian Hybrid, Lucy(Lawless) Strat
Team 2 will be similar to Team 1 from last round. They will play MegaUber, Lucy, or a Russian Hybrid type strat. They should be done with techs and doing decently by turn 260. That means decent land, already configured to produce or in forts. The shouldn't still be teching, and they should have significant defense in every branch.


Team 3(25%): MidRanker Strat Force
Team 3 will comprise a variety of variations, however Spike's Midranking strat techs should be your goal. Whether you play a forceful, Hunter style strat or Spike's, you need to get into production by turn 350 or so. You will certainly be expected to have mechanization, mass production, and radio. Whether you go for naval techs, air techs, advanced mech, or any other combination is up to the player. The main thing is a good group of solid rankers who have enough techs so that at turn 900 or so, they can go from zero scientists to nuke teched within 250 turns. That way they will be able to save up to about 170(90) and get two good tech runs in and fire a few nukes within 24 hours, and the window of opportunity to preemptively kill them will still be pretty small.


Intel Contingent:
We need about three intellers. I will be one, I'm going to tech to 8/2/3/5/2/7 first however, so I won't be a huge contributor to the early intel effort. I will however be doing tech steals throughout and hopefully around turn 1200 or so I'll be able to nuke quickly, with an impenetrable intel defense, and with a lot of land and cycled market cash.


I don't see any need for pacted rankers this round, seeing as how we managed to get rank dominance easily enough. Nukes are the name of the game here. We don't need any one to go out of their way to fire rockets or do a traditional low rank, minimal defense, 2000 land speed nuke strat. I'm certainly sure we will nevertheless have people doing this anyway. That's fine, but everyone who doesn't play the same strat every round or is completely on their own program doesn't need to do these things. I cannot think of a single round where everyone was like "Gee, we needed a lot more pacted rankers that round" or "We lost because we didn't have enough rocketeers". Speed nukers have had a purpose in the past, but midnuking is only a slight adjustment off of speed nuking and a very useful one...since by playing a stronger strat and keeping yourself a 3 nuke target you contribute a lot more even if you die than a speed nuker who fires 1 or 0 nukes, is a farm all round, and get nuked out for a cheap 2 nukes.