Gillette Turn Discussion

[Old Harry]

I'm glad you agree on closing borders - theoretically they can't declare next turn, so they won't know what we have...

I went for the southern of the two tiles in the end to have coverage to the south of Epee too.

I think that I went a bit overboard with settling crappy cities on SFL before it became necessary - if we'd held off until Trolls arrived with settlers or we'd built the forbidden palace I think we could have got to Communism a few turns quicker and our power graph could have started going up a lot earlier. I wonder if it would have been enough?

[Cheater Hater]

Oh, Trolls were in a Golden Age all this time? That explains a lot

Message to M3 sounds fine, since either we'll be able to afford the interest or Trolls won't be around anymore
When would our GG spawn most likely? What would we be using it for--we have at least one Medic, and another wandering around somewhere right?

Oh, Trolls can't declare on us next turn phase--that changes a lot, since I thought they were at the top of the turn order, not the bottom. The more time to prepare, the better I guess
When you say next turn do you mean the upcoming phase (end of T200) or on T201? The upcoming phase would be breaking the NAP, right? Or do you think we'll get a turn of reprieve? I don't think delaying the war with us makes much sense (since every turn's delay is a turn where they don't have to deal with M3 and possibly Pirates, if they ever cancel their NAP )

I have no idea on the specifics of war stuff--just make sure not to lose anything unnecessarily (like Airships in undefended cities).

What cities did we settle on SFL that were crappy? If we're going onto retrospectives, if we were going to delay settling SFL cities, it probably would have made sense to delay Astronomy, especially if we only had to give up, say, Rapier until we took it from Trolls in the inevitable war. In this situation, I think total control of SFL was worth it, even if it delayed Communism--though did we ever find out if Trolls had a settler on their boat?

[Old Harry]

Can one of you guys have a look at where Trolls moved their boats and stacks of troops before m3 play? Our airship visibility will last until then.

Also did Trolls declare? We are before them in turn order so I think we should be allowed to declare first by the nap...

I think cities from v onwards could have waited, except they needed border pops to seal the coast so they couldn't, so I'm not sure how we could have got caught back up..

[YossarianLives]

I should be able to log in tonight and take some pictures

[Cheater Hater]

Again, what advantage do we get by declaring? We want to survive long enough to get M3 and Pirates in the war, and the fewer turns we have to defend, the better, right? Or is Trolls' production just too much at this point, with both of us out of golden ages?

[Old Harry]

They play right after us and will be declaring themselves (depending on what yossarian's Intel shows), if we declare first we have a chance at naval supremacy and burning their coastal cities... at least we can pin down some units on their coast.

[Cheater Hater]

I thought we were only in position to burn their crappy island cities? Can we actually attack some cities on the mainland?

[YossarianLives]

Sorry guys, I thought I posted the pictures last night. I was having internet problems though, so I guess my post didn't go through. Anyways, we're still at peace, that's the first thing

I was greeted by this offer:




I accepted of course Old Harry can always return it if it wasn't actually needed.

Alright, so what you're all waiting for, the Land Front:




The Naval Front:




And the Troll fleet which is heading to our southern cities:




Did I miss anything?

[Old Harry]

Thanks for that Yossarian! Always happy for more money... And you got everything I was hoping for.

Alright, so what you're all waiting for, the Land Front:

I count 40 cavalry that can hit Epee, I don't see any promotions or glow but they must be at least 5 xp each, if not 10. I've done a bit of battle simming and I see three options:
1. We could put our 17 rifles in Epee along with 17 muskets and 12-16 pikes (and a grenadier, 10 knights, 17 cannons and 6 catapults if we really wanted to). If they want to attack that they'll lose over half of their cavalry and only kill a handfull of our units. Then we fall back and heal up with our GG medic III.
2. Alternatively we don't show our rifles just yet - only putting muskets and pikes in means they still can't take the city, but will lose a lot less units if they do try.
3. Finally we could retreat everyone, leaving just a few well-fortified pikes and muskets to stop it being a walk-over?

Jemmy is gone - I guess we leave the longbows in there just to slow them down a bit - make them bombard it? Katana can't go this turn unless the cavalry go that way. Depending on how hard we make Epee we could see the cavalry go for Katana while the cannons and infantry park outside Epee.

Remember our whole game plan is to delay as long as possible, until we have enough cannons together and they are far enough into our culture that we can seriously damage their stack and then clean it up. I think I favour option 1, but 2 has merit too. Any other ideas?

The Naval Front:

This is where we can do some damage. The question is do we try to kill frigates for naval dominance, kill Single Malt or kill Cape Cod? We only have 5 frigates and a privateer available, but we have four airships to take off 15% or so from their boats...

Their galleon with four frigates is going to attack Rapier with rifles next turn. So I think we can kill two birds by going for that stack - if we kill it we'll have temporary naval dominance, allowing us to then fork all the cities up here and use the airships for softening the rifles up. If we don't kill the galleon we can leave our stack of frigates in the way so they have to go around and can't directly attack rapier. We'll need to promote two of our frigates to flanking/nav II to hit the stack which isn't very good compared to combat II.

Alternatively we burn Single Malt and move our frigate stack so that their galleon can't get straight to rapier, but don't attack any boats yet. What do you think?

And the Troll fleet which is heading to our southern cities:

Unfortunately Oathkeeper is likely to go down in the next two turns. Trolls could have 9 rifles on their boats. If they have the xp to make a few amphibious it'll be this turn. We can have two muskets and a crossbow to make it a bit difficult. I'm expecting them to unload rifles onto the forest NE of the city. We'll dry-whip the musket to take the city down to size 3.

I'm able to play this turn in about 4 or 5 hours time - or I could save it until tomorrow morning (about 16 hours) - are you guys around? What times would be good for you?

[Cheater Hater]

I'll hopefully be around in a couple hours--less likely around tomorrow morning, but presumably Yossarian is more important for war tactics stuff--just ping me on Gchat to see if I'm around

I like option 1 on the northern front--I'd don't see any reason to hide our Rifles, and they can't siege our cities this turn, right?

On the naval front, how much does burning down their crappy island cities help us? I'd focus on trying to destroy as many Galleons as possible, even if it means losing the naval battle long-term in my opinion--after we defend against the initial assault, we can still build enough Airships/ships to defend SFL, and then any troops Trolls are sending via ships are troops not going on the main assault to Occam--btw, how far is Occam from the nearest coast?

For the southern front, I feel Oathkeeper is an acceptable loss, especially if it's only size 3--how many troops are going into Pike? The key with losing Oathkeeper is that the peninsula is a long way from Occam and our core.