Meta: North USA is the worst country on the 31 player map.

I think Supremacy 1914 is a nicely balanced game. All of the countries have a good chance to win when led well. But, some are certainly better than others. I was attempting to create a tier list for Supremacy and I came to the conclusion that Northern USA is the worst on the 31 player map.

Prove me wrong.

Protip: you can't.

The (mostly) good -

It's capital is New York. A real pain to invade from Toronto. It takes about 12 hours to go from there to New York with infantry. Overall this capital isn't bad. It is on the water, but it is difficult to commit a battleship to go in there without prior intel. It is a double province which is good to have as the capital in my opinion.

It's resources are very good with the exception of oil. It has a great mix of iron, lumber, coal, grain, fish and gas. However, it is a double edged sword because it's resources cause it to be a jack-of-all-trades country, where it might be better off if it were really good at materials or food. It's best assets are it's energy. And that is one of the reasons it is actually bad. Read on.

It's double resource provinces are New York, an iron and............

The (mostly) bad -

Scranton, a coal. Scranton is in my opinion one of the most valuable provinces north of Washington D.C. If Greenland has attacked Canada and conquered it all, they will certainly be chomping at the bit to invade you just for Scranton alone, never mind everything else. The rest of your energy resources compound this issue. Central USA is a material heavy country, and would just love to expand their border's into North USA as opposed to South USA more often than not. And it is unlikely they will attack Detroit and then attack South Canada. They will take Detroit and go right for Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

By far though, the WORST feature of North USA is it's access to AI provinces. It has none. Detroit is your oil source and, to get it, you need to go through Toronto or Cleveland. There is no way Central USA won't be defending their double fish province Cleveland. And even if you line up the diplomacy with Central USA, South Canada will likely have already taken it.

But let's say you do ally with Central USA or South Canada or both. What SC or CUSA player in their right mind would allow lousy North USA to take Detroit??

I wouldn't. That won't even be an issue though. When was the last time you saw NUSA, CUSA and SC being allies? The answer is never. It has never happened in the history of The Great War 31 player map unless the teams were pre-arranged and then that coalition would have lost anyway haha.

If by some miracle you get Detroit, what AI can you hit next? Halifax. Wow you got a fish. Great work. I love playing as South Canada and if NUSA got Halifax, I would nuke their country, I would go to the shop, buy 1000 dollars worth of Goldmarks and just keep hitting that military sabotage button until their capital is destroyed. Then I would repeat that with my entire bank account. I would take out a loan against my house and sell my car to afford more Goldmarks to grind that slimy North USA player into the dust for seizing my Halifax. I would go to the player's house and ask them to move in. Then I would steal their credit card and run up a massive Goldmark charge on it to destroy him. Then I would purposely get us both banned from the game for multi-accounting because I was stealing his internet.

One more thing before all of you tell me I'm wrong and you think "X" country is worse. Assuming North USA wants to play conservative and opts to stay out of alliances for a while, how many fortresses do they need at the beginning to secure their borders? 5? 6? 7?

8. 8 fortresses to secure the border completely. I don't think any other country is worse when combining all of the negative factors afflicting them. The only countries worse for defense than that that I can think of off the top of my head are Poland, Ukraine and Lithuania. I think Lithuania needs 10, Ukraine 9 and Poland 9. But these countries are much easier to play than North USA because everyone in Eastern Europe is just as scared as everyone else in Eastern Europe. It forces diplomacy over there. But, in contrast, Central USA and South Canada are extremely safe and easy countries to defend.

When was the last time you saw NUSA win? Never. When was the last time you saw North USA take over all of North America? Probably never. When was the last time you saw them being bodied by anyone and everyone? Every. Single. Time.

But go ahead. Prove me wrong.

ty

Quote from Warriorgu

What tier do you put South USA in?

I have had good experiences with that country. I played SOuth USA 4 times,and once,I won and the rest of the time I didn't (Because I was too lazy to play those rounds). If you pay a lot of attention and get good allies,Southern USA is really nice. If Morocco or West Algeria are your allies and dont want French West africa,or are fighting each other,you can go and grab French West Africa for the oil.

Funny that you posted. I was inspired to make this thread because of your best countries in the 31 player thread.

South USA is a solid C-tier to me. I think it belongs higher up in C-tier but doesn't break into B.

The only thing that stops it from being an S-tier like North Canada and Arabia (two of the other corner countries) or A or B-tier are it's bad options in many situations.

Like you said, "if you pay attention and.." Southern USA is situationally good. But here is the kicker: what you described is the best possible situation for Southern USA other than conquering all of North America. But, even what you described is highly suboptimal. Reason being, you must cross the Atlantic to get to your African provinces. This causes them to gain morale at a devastatingly slow rate. Let's just assume for the sake of argument that your allies in North America are competent and will not betray you (in this situation, this need for trust alone makes SUSA suboptimal).

So in this hypothetical situation you leave your ally Central USA alone to take over the continent slowly. You send everyone over to Africa to capitalize on the rich provinces there. You conquer FWA and secure it against the Africans.

What do you think the chances of sending your army home are? They will probably never see Florida again. That is, unless you are under attack or betrayed, but back on point. Those troops will conquer the provinces and they will go to 25% morale. And, since the distance from Tallahassee is around 3 days (iirc), those provinces will gain their morale back extremely slowly. Every day your troops are stationed in one of your African provinces is a day where it loses 15% of the difference between it's current morale and that province's morale. So, assuming everyone is doing early expansion in the most optimal possible way, you will have the weakest troops in the game by strength points.

That is the major flaw of the SUSA player. If they decide to expand in North America and wait to go to Africa late game, they will still be disadvantaged. A strong Africa player is the bane of Southern USA. And, if you are in a coalition that has split up North America, none of you individually will have enough resources for X-TREME Battleship Rushing (patent pending).

In the late game where a strong coalition dominates Europe and Africa and a strong player or coalition dominates North America, North America is easier to attack than Europe and Africa. It's because Europe and Africa are have an irregular horizontal shape and North America has an irregular vertical shape. ie. Europe and Africa are fat and North America is tall. If the North American players don't control the Atlantic with an iron fist, it will be extremely difficult to see where the enemy will invade at because there are numerous options with the most obvious being Richmond, Miami and Halifax.

Conversely invasions against Europe and Africa are very, very predictable, even without deep scouting. Portugal, FWA double fish, Ireland, England. 95% of the time, the invasion will go to one or more of these points. If they are crafty, they may sneak guys from Greenland above everything and land in Norway. But when was the last time you saw a NA player land in France? If they are crafty, they may also try to go to Casablanca or Tangiers etc.

So all they have to do is move their troops westward and stock up on railguns and bombers in the critical invasion points to ward off battleships and suddenly Europe and Africa are impregnable. Conversely, North America will have a hard time choosing exactly where to build aerodromes and railroads and where to place the railguns.

What's my point in all this late game strat? I was beginning to ask the same thing. It's that North America is faaar better to dominate with one person than to have a coalition splitting it up. With a coalition, you are pretty much guaranteed to be unable to produce enough iron to make 3 battleships every 3 days. But as a solo that is very possible. The players might feel disheartened at not having enough resources and opt to build subs or cruisers, but North America cannot afford to pull punches with their navy late game. They absolutely need it to breach the heavily defended Europe of the late game (this is all assuming optimal play).

So in summary, the way to get the most out of Southern USA's lack of good options is to exploit Central USA and not ally with them. Just wait for them to attack the AI day one like they always do. Once they have it all conquered, strike at the weakest point and mop them up while you control your border. In this way, I think Southern USA may be an A-tier because it leads to a very strong start. But, thinking about their lack of options puts them in C-tier. For whatever reason, the CUSA invasion may not be possible because of diplomacy or great play by Central USA or maybe they just go inactive after building forts and offices. Even if they build nothing at all, attacking them day one without them being weakened by the AI will weaken you very badly so that North USA will have an easy time taking the entire USA. For a Northern USA player, this prayer is the absolute best case scenario (but even then they still need like 5 forts with South Canada with garrisons). Yea NUSA is really bad.

Great things about SUSA (you already know) position, AI double to take, resources, oil province in North America.

Jesus that was an essay. What am I doing with my life?