First turn complete, there are apparently now two VC cadres operating. We spot one of them thanks to intel from Do Chi village, and I send Green Berets to keep an eye on them. Another Infantry unit is purchased and dispatched towards My Thaob.
Horrifyingly, they come under attack from yet another VC cadre... but manage to hold out. Next turn they move into the clear and a Huey sweeps in to pick them up. Worse however, a VC unit appears next to my firebase, which I have managed to leave entirely empty. I have engineers and tanks nearby, but they can't get there in a single turn. I don't know if the base has a chance of surviving and attack with no defenders - I'm assuming I'll have to use those engineers to rebuild it.
With a central supply base, units operating nearby can often be resupplied by a Huey which can then return to the firebase in the same turn, so just a few can resupply 3-4 ground units comfortably. After finally getting a reliable income, it wasn't long before I could afford another Green Beret unit, and I also managed to train two ARVN units, further boosting my forces. The combination of Green Berets to spot enemies with my armour and artillery meant a lot of dead enemies and a lot of income - killing VC and NVA units also boosts the hearts and minds of nearby villages as well of course, so that number just kept going up as well.
Overall the patch has made a lot of good improvements, particularly little interface things which make it that much smoother and more enjoyable to play. I suppose I shouldn't have expected the addition of weather alone to really increase the difficulty all that much (though it's an excellent feature), and should increase the various options further next time. I might also have been lucky early on - if there had been VC ambushes while I was moving my engineers up to the firebase location, that could have been a game changer. It's been a pleasure to return to Vietnam '65, but I'm a little concerned that my strategy might be a little too effective to encourage strategic variation. A central firebase plus artillery seems like a no-brainer to me, especially if you can pull it off even with a fairly hostile map like this one.