[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[antisocialmunky]

I wonder if pindicator is worth keeping alive just for the WW in REM's cities.

[Sullla]

Yeah, I agree that this war is hurting REM a lot. The loss of trade route income is really painful; he's at war with us, he's at war with pindicator, he was just at war with BGN and Dreylin (so the trade routes are practically worthless), and Donovan has what, three cities? If REM were Spiritual, he'd probably go into Mercantilism at this point. Losing all that trade route income is likely cutting his tech rate by 100-200 beakers per turn, if not more. And on the other side of things, Dreylin and our team both really need to stay at peace, as we both need each other's trade routes quite badly. Imagine that: Dreylin, our military ally and trading partner! This game can bring the strangest results.

The way I see it, we're not catching up to REM, but we're not falling further behind either. I also agree with this summary:

It's hard for us to attack REM right now, but it's pretty difficult for him to do the same to us - he just recently tried to invade and was forced to retreat despite having a military 2x our size AND a small tech edge.

Yep. We made a nice defense and it's just darned hard to attack. Plus, REM was never able to bring his full forces to bear because he had to defend against BGN and pindicator at the same time. If we can keep the other major players in this game at war / not trading with REM longterm, it's going to be really tough for him to ever bring much force to bear against a single target, plus all of the economic penalties mentioned above. That's the crucial "IF" though, getting everyone to keep working together against REM. In a no-diplo game, that's the key rub.

About paratrooper: they can't attack after paradropping, but they can capture empty cities. We definitely want a token defender in every city for that reason (plus possible Great General / Commando shenanigans). Also worth noting is the fact that we're going to obsolete ivory when we discover Industrialism, and that's going to lower the happiness cap by 2 points. I think that will make one or two empty cities unhappy anyway, so this seems like the right time to stuff some unit into them.

Great People: it's going to be tough to get out the second Great Person for the 2 GPP Golden Age. Getting more Great People beyond that is virtually impossible. Pacifism is also going to be terrible for our economy since we have such a large military. We probably will need to run it at least a little bit, but we want to limit our time in the civic. Let's see what Radio produces in the next 6 turns or however much longer it takes, then go from there.

[Sullla]

Also, apparently there's a new turn up (and REM took both of pindicator's cities back on his half of the turn). However, I can't seem to connect to the game, and the Civstats logger is also down, so the Pitboss server may have gone offline. I'll check again tomorrow and see if I can get into the game.

[scooter]

We're starting to feel the pain of BGN/Xenu backing out.



He's got 4 airships, 7 tanks, and 4 Cavs in range. If he uses those workers to add a rail, I think those Infantry come into play.

We've only got around 7 Infantry in that city. Now, we could squeeze like 14 in, but "could" and "should" are two different things.



REM is prepping for a possible Dreylin attack. I didn't screenshot his units in every city, but honestly I don't think Dreylin has a prayer of cracking him up here. REM just has too much.

[Sullla]

Hmmm. Well, that is not very good news for us, especially with me not having a lot of time right now to log into the game and take a look around. Here's my thinking just based on the screenshots in this thread:

* First of all, I think we should try to defend Aspirin. If we give up the city, REM's just going to raze it, and we can't afford to be losing cities that strong right now. (If the worst case scenario occurs and REM takes the city, we'll have time to reinforce Radio before he can wade through our culture to reach it.)

* The ideal play here would be pillaging the road on the tile west of Aspirin. We could do that by declaring war on Donovan, then pillaging the tile in enemy territory. (We can't pillage a tile inside another civ's borders without declaring war on them.) Unfortunately, uh, we have zero cavalry or land units with more than one movement point. Whoops. So that sweet little tactical play is not an option.

* With that out of play, I still think we try to defend the city. If we can put 14 infantry in there, then the city isn't going to fall. REM simply doesn't have enough attacks to kill all the defending units. Yes, I know tanks have Blitz promotion, but each attack costs a movement point, and his tanks will need to use 1 of their 2 movement to reach the city, leaving only one point left over for attacking. (Lurkers, feel free to post and tell me if I have the mechanic wrong here. Pretty sure this is how it works though.)

Furthermore, we can promote our infantry to City Garrison II, and with those promotions along with the ~15% culture defense in Antiseptic, we actually should get OK odds against tanks. I think REM's tanks only get one promotion from Barracks, right? I know he's in Free Religion, and I don't think he's in Vassalage. CG2 infantry should do OK against CR1 tanks. REM does get the 4 airship airstrikes, but at least that's all he can use. Only airships in Wax Trax can hit our city, not airships in Glitch Mode.

* So REM shouldn't be able to take the city this turn. We stuff Antispetic full of as many units as possible, and get more units ready to counterattack next turn if he attacks and comes up short of taking the city. We can use ship chaining + railroads to move a lot of units over there quickly, right? It would be especially useful if we could get our cannons into position to attack a possible REM stack next to Antiseptic next turn. I don't know if that's possible or not. Might even be useful to build another cannon or two in nearby cities like Radio and Pasteurization this turn for potential use next turn. Maybe.

* Hopefully we can survive this turn. Then next turn is T340. If Dreylin joins our war, we do what we can and fight on. If Dreylin doesn't join our war, we say "screw this!" and do what we can to sue for peace. Try to sign peace with REM, attack pindicator, and accept that we're probably finishing second in this game. Fortunately I think we can survive this one remaining interturn, and then we'll go from there.

Those are my thoughts without looking at the actual situation in-game. I'll leave off city micro and worker suggestions to leave your hands free for this turn. I'll also try to check back on this tomorrow morning. The lurkers in this thread have gone ominously silent since yesterday, so... uhh... good luck? But seriously, I think the overarching goal is pretty straightforward. Hold Aspirin this turn, see if Dreylin joins our war, and then we'll know whether to sue for peace or fight on from there next turn.

[scooter]

Yeah that's pretty much my thought. My problem here is I don't have the innate knack for what his odds are going to be like because these are units I so rarely play with. With Knights on Longbows I can guess the odds within 10-15% or so given X set of circumstances. Tanks on Infantries not so much.

As for chaining in - it's a little awkward. This turn we can get to 14 units in there. The following turn we can probably only add a couple (I'll definitely adjust builds to add more land units). The turn after that, we can add a lot. We can definitely survive this turn (unless he's got a trick I haven't figured out yet), and we can survive two turns from now, but next turn will be hairy. The other issue is the more units we lose this turn, the more we'll continue to be vulnerable somewhere. But let's deal with that when we get there. I agree we can't afford to just cede a valuable city. One tiny bit of good news is that a bunch of those Infantry are 9xp, which means if they survive an attack, we'll get to promote them next turn to CG3. Every bit helps.

I'm also going to rebase a couple airships up to Radio so that we can do more bombarding next turn. This turn we can only do one IIRC. Finally, we could revolt into Nationalism for 5 turns and draft and/or get into Slavery short-term for some emergency whips. Neither are ideal for a myriad of reasons, but it's better than dying. My plan is to not do either of those this turn, and re-evaluate next turn based on how the dice rolls go.

One final thing. I think I'm going to keep two of the workers at Induction Coil in/around Pindicator's land. I'd like the ability to drop a combat rail somewhere if an opportunity arises. We're getting pretty full on tile improvements, so it's worth getting a couple workers onto the front over there.

[antisocialmunky]

Can you get Donny to kick those tanks out of his territory via war dec?

[scooter]

This turn we can get to 14 units in there. The following turn we can probably only add a couple. The turn after that, we can add a lot. We can definitely survive this turn (unless he's got a trick I haven't figured out yet), and we can survive two turns from now, but next turn will be hairy.

This turned out to be wrong, but in a good way. I think we're fine if we survive this turn (15 units total). We'll be adding plenty next turn. I'm still concerned about the "unless he's got a trick I haven't figured out yet" bit, but overall I think we're ok. Here's my attempt at a defense.

Turn 339

Before I get to the good stuff, a quick note about workers since Sullla may login and think I did some odd things. First, I used a worker down by Hydraulic to walk into Dreylin's territory along the coast before returning. I was a little (probably irrationally) concerned about REM boating Hydraulic from some weird angle if we left it lightly defended. I also moved a couple of those western workers up in between Radio and Aspirin in case they need to repair a pillaged tile or something. Finally, on the southern island, I mistakenly moved 3 worker onto a railroaded hill from a tile that wasn't roaded at all, wasting their turns. If that turns out to be the only mistake, it'll be a rousing success.



I made an unorthodox move here and shuffled our new Destroyer into Aspirin. The rationale here is that we're about to get some air strikes against us, so let's damage a few of them while we're at it with Destroyer intercepts. On the off chance he manages to burn the city and kill all the units inside, a lost Destroyer will be the least of our problems.

I briefly thought it would also soak up air strikes since it's the strongest unit in the city, but a quick WB test said Destroyers don't defend against air strikes in the city if there's land units inside. I used this newfound knowledge to move some of our outdated naval units out east into Spinning Jenny where they'd be safe from air strikes.



AMBUSH IT IS. I gave City Garrison II to most of these Infantry, but there were a couple 11xp units with 1 promo available, so I gave them Ambush. I thought about saving the promo, but I felt it wasn't worth the risk.



Unfortunately I couldn't quite Galleon chain the way I hoped. The boats on the "Bala Stage" tile were 1 tile short of Cotton Gin which would have let them move 10 tiles west and load onto our far western Galleon and then unload in Aspirin all in one turn. That would have 1) totally ruled and 2) made us bulletproof. Very unfortunate, and if we lose the city that'll be why.

So we settled for moving into Steam Engine, unloading, and moving west. I elected to take 2 Galleons (6 units). I was afraid to take more and endanger Textile Island.



We JUST completed the workshop 1SW of the city on this turn which lets us complete a Cannon EoT. I was trying to micro this city before I completed the workshop, and I was dismayed at coming in at exactly 79h before realizing I could complete the workshop. Every unit counts.



Pasteurization could easily 1T a unit, so I shuffled tiles over here so that Hydraulic could also complete a unit EoT.

Here's my defenses:



1) 14 Infantry and 1 Rifle make up our Aspirin defenses. The good news is they're extremely well promoted. We should be in pretty good shape.

2) The selected units are in Pasteurization. They couldn't make it all the way to Aspirin (or into Hydraulic where they could have loaded onto a Galleon), so I decided to hold them back a little bit. If REM does think about attacking, I'd rather him not know that I'm building up a decent counter-attacking group. The 6th unit from boats is in Hydraulic.

3) Aspirin, Hydraulic, Pasteur, Radio, Haber, and Telegraph were all able to 1T units. I had to change a bunch of wealth builds to make it happen, but it's worth it. Telegraph's unit won't make it, but all the rest can next turn. I brought 1 northern Infantry down to Dynamite, where it can join next turn if necessary or return to the northern front for defense.

4) We have a 4-move Galleon over here. I couldn't use it this turn, so I moved it into Battery (just below the interface). That island is uncomfortably lightly defended so we don't really want to empty it, but I wanted flexibility. So I put a couple Infantry onto that Galleon. If needed, it can sail into Hydraulic and they can move into Aspirin (and attack out of it). If they're not needed, they'll just go back to where they came from.

5) Between Aspirin and Radio we've got about 5 airships able to hit his stack.

This turn: 15 units
Next turn: 13-17 more units (including 4 cannons and 7-10 infantry)

So this is the turn to cross our fingers. If we make it to next turn we should be fine. My bet is that he'll retreat.



We only took 7 units away from this front, so we should be fine still, but things aren't quite as bulletproof. The good news is he's far enough away that if he goes all-in here, we can recall some of those other units.

I loaded a few more units onto Galleons in places where it was safe to do so and set up another chain or two. Just about everywhere he can threaten we can swarm a lot of units very, very quickly between 6-move Galleons, chains, pre-loaded units, and rails. I can get units from pindicator's city by Induction up to Zipper by REM/Dreylin in the same turn. I'm honestly pretty happy with the defense here. I would explain it in more detail if there weren't so many other things to write about, but it's probably the most elaborate defensive setup I've ever had to put together.

REM has added a couple more Battleships, so if he pushes forward it could still get very dicey (we probably couldn't wipe his naval stack anymore), but I don't think he's going to do that on the eve of the treaty expiration with Dreylin.

Finally, I did leave some extra breathing room in the budget for some extra cash. That's mostly in case we need to do an emergency upgrade. If not, we can use it to get to Industralism on time.

One final note: Dreylin could probably end us pretty easily here. We're stretched pretty thin. I'm reminded of the game Diplomacy. Sometimes the stab can be just a little too tempting. I'm hoping that's not the case. That said, I don't think Dreylin could convert a stab into a victory, and I think that'll prevent him from screwing with us. Famous last words?

[Sullla]

Great work scooter! Heading out the door this morning, will try to check on this tonight.

[Elkad]

* With that out of play, I still think we try to defend the city. If we can put 14 infantry in there, then the city isn't going to fall. REM simply doesn't have enough attacks to kill all the defending units. Yes, I know tanks have Blitz promotion, but each attack costs a movement point, and his tanks will need to use 1 of their 2 movement to reach the city, leaving only one point left over for attacking. (Lurkers, feel free to post and tell me if I have the mechanic wrong here. Pretty sure this is how it works though.)

With the correct amount of rails/roads, they will only use some fraction of a move point to get adjacent to the city. If they have anything over 1 move, they can attack twice.
Or to rephrase, any combination of roads/rails where a single move unit would get to attack, a tank gets two attacks.