Gillette Turn Discussion

[Old Harry]

That's a shame. I probably shouldn't ask for more details...

I thought we could use the pause to do some planning for next turn. First up Jemmy. Trolls have three accuracy cannons in range to bombard and then tons of cavalry. I think they'd lose a lot of them if they attack next turn (210), but I'm not sure we should risk it as we can't replace these rifles.


I see two options for this turn:
1. stuff all our cannons, knights, pikes and rifles into Jemmy
2. leave our four longbows and seven pikes in Jemmy and retreat the other units so they can't be hit if Jemmy falls and the culture disappears.
I'm leaning towards the second, Jemmy is just undefendable and always will be. Perhaps they'll raze it and we could resettle on the oil instead? We'll have to think about this again next turn when we see where their big stack went.

Secondly the Troll fleet here is on its way to hit Machete, Gladius and Naginata. They have:
2 unpromoted Ironclads
2 SotL
5 Frigates
3 Galleons
The number of units in On the rocks hasn't changed for the last three or four turns, so its possible the galleons are empty, but that's a chance I don't want to take. We have a privateer and five SotLs with another couple coming from Machete and Gladius when whipped. If we hit them with our ships we'll injure the two ironclads, the two SotLs and kill a frigate. They'll then promo-heal the ironclads and carry on coming.


So what if we split up our other fleet - if we send the galleons north to hit the troll coastline again we have air cover all the way so I think they'll be safe until they join up with the growing northern fleet. That would allow our five frigates and two SotLs to skirt Cuba Libre (out of sight of the Trolls) and hit their stack when it gets out of their culture (and has been hit a bit with airships). It'll still be a close fight, but lets cross our fingers... we should also put 6 or so muskets in Machete. Just in case.

[YossarianLives]

Yeah, abandon Jemmy. Let them raze it or capture it. It's going to be more trouble to hold than it's worth for whoever has it.

I like your naval plan.

[Cheater Hater]

What are their odds if they try to attack into Jemmy with Rifles with their Cavs? Would they want to risk losing all their Cavs (their main advantage in this war) with M3 and Pirates incoming?

Is there a way to block the coast so the Ironclads can't get through, while leaving each stack with reasonable numbers? That leaves Trolls with 3 options: (this assumes we soften up the Ironclads with our airships)
1. Split up the stack by moving the non-Ironclads around our ships--this seems suicidal if we have enough ships to block them in the first place.
2. Attack then promote--this seems risky considering the airship damage and the coast defense bonus, and if it works the ironclads might be beat up enough that we can counter-attack them.
3. Promote then attack--this means they wouldn't heal that much comparatively, and could leave them in a bad spot post-combat (though they potentially could promote again next turn).

[Old Harry]

Turn 209

I found this little tidbit in the event log. I asked Q if he bought it or they just wanted to give it away... You can also see that Oathkeeper got razed, killing two rifles and a Zerk that I had plans for


Four strategically-placed airships give us visibility of the whole troll coastline, and make me happy to split our galleons from our SotL and Frigates.


I gifted M3 the great general and four cannons this turn, will keep trickling them into their arsenal on the journey to African Safari over the next three or four turns. I'm hoping drafting muskets for SFL will hide our power reduction.


We settle Glock and stuff it with airships. Hopefully they won't notice the city and we get a free shot at their stack of three SotLs next turn.


Then I noticed that HitAnyKey had rebuilt a road that allows our knights to hit Katana next turn. It'll be great if there are only two rifles in there, but I think the force that hit oathkeeper will be inside, in which case we may need to bring up the rifles, muskets and cannons that are a turn behind. Their 60-unit stack of one movers is on the 209 sign.


Jemmy is down to enough units to make it a bit spikey but no real trouble for Trolls to re-take. My guess is they have bigger fish to fry, but who knows? Sorry, I didn't want to risk putting all our eggs in this very fragile basket - they know we don't have rifling so killing our rifles would be a massive coup for them.


Down south we'll have six frigates a privateer and nine SotL available to hit this fleet t211 or t212. Need to remember that the galleons can move four, so Machette isn't safe after t211.


On the economic front a lot of cities are struggling for happy or are too small to draft, but I think we can keep getting muskets out for a while yet. We lost the fur again so I'm sending as many HR units to Trident and Quama as possible. Also I may have emptied a few to many units out of Occam. Will see what to do about that...


Score is looking good for us.


Have Trolls reached a plateau? Is war weariness as bad for them as us?



Sent this email to HAK too:

Hi HAK,

I spotted a privateer exploring the sea south of Smoothfoundland (the other continent) - if its not yours then I'll sink it, if it is then carry on...

I gifted the great general and four cannons to you this turn, will gift four more next turn, then the remaining nine the turn after, so that Trolls don't realise until the last minute. Hope they aren't too late... If your stack isn't huge perhaps you should talk to TheStick about combining forces to make something that Trolls can't crack?

Thanks for that road you re-built to Katana - it will allow our knights to take a shot at it next turn. If we can hold it I'll then think about attacking along the south coast.

At sea Trolls pose less of a threat to you than they did since they gifted TEAM a city. What kind of NAP do you have with TEAM by the way? It'd be funny if Q is feeding our conversations back to Trolls...

By the way Trolls have a great general so make sure all your cities within nine tiles of the border have two or three units in them - Longsword didn't and got razed

Happy war-mongering!

Cheers
Old Harry

And sent this to TheStick

Hey Mr (or Mrs) Stick,

I think we've now paid you approx 800 gold, but the 300 gpt deal will carry on for a while yet. Would you mind setting up a cancelling-out 300 gpt deal so we can just stop both in ten turns time? Or is there a more straightforward way to do it?

By the way Trolls have a great general so make sure all your cities within nine tiles of the border have two or three units in them - Longsword didn't and got razed.

Happy war-mongering!

ps I'm giving you that warning here rather than in the forum just in case Q is a double agent. I doubt he is, but I didn't think the info was worth risking.

[Cheater Hater]

Things seem good--WW should be much worse for Trolls since they took all our cities in our territory, right? Then we beat up the split stack in our territory as well. How bad is our WW?

Yeah, Trolls giving TEAM back a city seems really suspicious, especially since it didn't look like Red Bull was swamped by TEAM culture or anything--what's our NAP with TEAM?

[Old Harry]

They should do, although they do have the Statue of Zeus, are in Police State and have razed a bunch of our cities.

How do you check WW? It's 3-4 unhappy faces in our bigger cities, but I don't know what the formula is for how it works. I know you can see it between enemies, but is there a way to see it between yourself and someone else? Is there a War Weariness article on CFC?

Edit: There is

[Old Harry]

Turn 210

Will Trolls pause in their defensive manoeuvers to hit Jemmy? If they do our borders will shrink massively and our counter attack against Katana could be exposed.


So I think I'll build a road to the south west of M3's worker, put our stack on it, then move it next to Katana t211. Katana is at least slightly defensible and will get us our fur back.


Argh! Trolls have built three Grenadiers in Tequila Slammer, which means our grenadiers don't get better than 20% odds I could unload our muskets and use them as cannon fodder next turn, but even then I don't think our grenadiers get better than 50% - so I'm running away again.


Up north we'll kill these three SotLs this turn, then on t212 we could hit any of the coastal cities. I'm undecided between Salty Dog, Elephant Beer and Cape Cod. We should have the element of surprise with the latter two and Cape Cod can get air support. Note the ironclads though - we'll lose some ships if we attack.


CII SotL vs injured CII SotL: 82% Loss
CII SotL vs injured CI SotL: 84% Flawless win
CI SotL vs injured CI SotL: 80% Win
CI SotL vs redlined CI SotL: 99% Flawless win
Trolls can hit the selected SotL but won't get odds.


We'll research Music this turn so that we can pop the borders in Tequila Sunrise and Sour. After that do we go for:
- 9 turns - Economics - Corporation (get an extra 80 commerce and we can build wall st)
- 5 turns - Military Tradition (Curassiers for flanking away cannons)
- 9 turns - Biology (we have about 35 farms)
- 24 turns - Replacable Parts - Steam Power - Railroad (improved windmills (5) and watermills (2), workers work faster, machine guns and raiways)
- 5 turns - Constitution (revolting Representation, Free Speach, Caste System, Free Religion/Org Religion will take three turns, our 3-man golden age is 20-30 turns away)


Power

[Cheater Hater]

Things look good on the military front--are M3 and Pirates attacking this turn, or are they waiting?

How much extra gold does Wall Street get us in our shrine city, and how long will it take to build?
I like Biology, and I don't like Constitution (especially if we're not going to get a golden age for a while)

[YossarianLives]

Too bad about the grens in Slammer.

I like Biology, too. RP-SP-Rr is also tempting if we think the game is going to last at least another 30-40 turns.

[Old Harry]

If the game is going to last then we want to beat Trolls to combustion. Does biology help us do that better than railroad? How quickly would corporation pay for itself?

I'll see if I can crunch the numbers.