The more I think about it, the more I like striking at Comm's homeland. There's a lot more land there than in former-America, and mack wouldn't be able to hit me from Commodore's culture. I can neutralise Comm's big army with the defenders advantage and just wait for them to obsolete. With my new frigates I can disrupt attempts to ship them home in time.
|
Genghis Machinates
|
|
I was beginning to think Mack didn't care.
  Big question is how many frigates he has, both for contesting my own and bombarding my castle defenses. I don't remember a particular uptick after Chemistry and they weren't really necessary before. No-one was challenging him at sea and I don't think his berserkers needed much help against 2metra. Also curious is how much he paid on upgrades, only CR grenadiers really scare me. I should have paid more attention to his gold totals after researching Mil Science. He has only just researched Printing Press since then though, which is pretty slow, 5t I think. Could be 2t into upgrading, about 20 berserkers ... Really should have kept track of that, might have to go back and check some screenshots. Lwhekk might have to be dropped, I'm not sure yet. I've been steeling myself for that possibility though, because flatland cities are so hard to defend. We'll see what mack does next turn. If he sticks around I'll probably think about closing borders with him. Trade routes don't have much of an effect at this stage of the game IMO but it would be nice to inflict some economic cost on him. I hate getting threatened and not being able to hurt them back. And at least his city count is now higher than mine so it should have a bigger effect on him. Btw, here's his homeland.  Unfortunately ex-metra land is the only area of the map I haven't explored(damn barb galleys!). His garrisons are very light over here, but only OH could take advantage of that and he doesn't have the OBs to see it. OH has saved up a massive amount of gold too, which means he's behind in Mil tech, so I don't think he's fighting in the immediate future.
Mack retreated and played a double turn.
 Sounds good to me! I'm feeling pretty happy about my ability to defend my coasts in the future, so I think I can push out the last round of iceballs. Meanwhile tech is set to Mil Tradition. I think I'll head up there, upgrade a bunch of Knights and invade Commodore's north. For one brief moment I have all the relevant graphs(I ran 10% EP on mack last turn because I really wanted to check out his power graph for the upgrades). So here's a dump, Mack and REM are just out of golden age, OH is still finishing one.     
I think Comm is going for Steel, he's not going to make this easy.
Btw, I checked the population numbers and Mack is about 50 pop ahead of me. So his real food surplus per turn on me is only 50f. On the other hand he'll gain ~100hpt on me when he techs Replaceable Parts. He appears to be building Grenadiers instead of ships in his homeland.  What's that game? You want my iceballs to get even more efficient?  Also pictured is some of my Commodorian invasion forces. A rough estimate is 30 rifles, 30 cavs, 15 siege, 15 medieval units heading over our northern border.
August 6th, 2016, 17:54
(This post was last modified: August 6th, 2016, 17:54 by GermanJoey.)
Nice! And lets see a pic of that shrine!
 Slightly unfortunate that nobody else has adopted the AP religion. We'll just have to convert them by force.   Here's the tech situation btw. Right now I plan to pick up Steel after Mil Tradition. Mainly that allows me to not feel bad about building siege to reinforce the Commodore war. Half priced drydocks will be nice though as will the Ironworks. Military Science is an option after that, though I view it as unlikely. I probably only need to tech it if Mack tries to get involved again, but I don't think he will. Grenadiers are better coastal defenders than Rifles(I think CG2 ones in hill cities will actually get odds on upgraded berserkers!) and I would need Ships of the Line to counter his. I think it's pretty likely I'll get enough xp from this war to get my Commando factory going, so it's not really a dead end tech. Economically, I'm looking at Democracy over esoteric techs like Steam Power and Corporation. Scientific Method is of course a big nope and nothing after it is immediately strong enough to make up for obsolete monasteries. Econ -> Corporation has a pretty poor payback time in terms of trade routes, because I already have castles in about half of my cities. With the shrine Wall Street now becomes tempting, but it's still a big 600h, so I don't think the techs are 'must-have'. Steam Power just doesn't make much sense on this map, it doesn't exactly have a high density of rivers. Unlocked behind these two mediocre techs is Assembly Line, and I don't see why I should be in such a hurry to get there. It's a lot of beakers and factories are expensive. You need a certain base hpt in a city for a factory to be worth building and a lot of my cities don't meet that. My empire's demographic is a couple of metropolis and a lot of relatively small cities. Instead, I'm seriously considering Democracy and using the new Ironworks from Steel to build the Statue of Liberty. It's not a game-breaking move with my current setup but if the long term goal is to conquer my continent it will be. Besides, who wouldn't want to see 50bpt iceballs?   Here's my thought for the Ironworks btw. It didn't immediately come to mind, because, well, no food resources. But that's par for the course on this map, I think a BFC full of grass windmills with a river is the best I'll get. The only problem is the border location, I've been thinking of this city as a relatively expendable buffer up to now but that might have to change.
Decided to go in a turn early with less upgraded cavs, the rest can always catch up.
  OH and Mack both have Replaceable Parts now but it didn't have as big an effect as I thought: 
Time to crush the non-believers.
 Couple more Cavs to upgrade here next turn who can still reach the battle in time.  A whole bunch of extra units will get involved at Sal's Gap. Cavs, G2 Rifles and a boat full of trebuchets will make 40 units.  This is where Comm's biggest force is located, and my weakest. I'm not sure whether Comm will move in though. He doesn't really have enough hitters, I think I should be able to attack out and kill most of them if he does so. I could let a couple of fully fortified G2 Rifles thin the numbers out first too. I guess we'll see what he does. I'm sending some newly built Cavs down here to even things out though and potentially flank the siege too. Comm has been researching something for a while and he's almost out of gold, so he should get it soon. Astro, Mil Science or Steel are the options, I'm still betting on Steel.
I took Fole Keep and Sal's Gap this turn.
 Comm wisely retreated his forces, so I'll probably have to take my time and go with the siege again. I lost 1 Cav at 70% odds in each city, killing about 6 of his units IIRC.  Comm's Carracks smuggled these Knights across the strait, costing them a few ships to my Frigates. Not sure about my positioning down here tbh, the northern 3 Cavs could die, but they should cost him a bit if so.  The survivors of the naval duel. I'll probably fill those Galleons up next turn and threaten Comm's island, which is very lightly defended.  I have a new plan for taking Neander, made a bit easier by the Knight evacuation.  First we cut the city off from reinforcements with G2 Rifles, then small trios like this bombard the fortifications. I can't see how Comm efficiently removes these small groups of Rifles. This should neutralise his large numbers of catapults pretty nicely. The city is on flatland, so I think I get odds pretty easily once the Castle drops. Meanwhile, Mack is going to invade Ot4E.  |
