Dtay's Little Red Book

[dtay]

Don't have time for report right now, but last turn might be what one could call an, err, strategic set back. More to come.

[Mardoc]

I look forward to hearing the other side of the story

[dtay]

So as I'm guessing people are aware, I had twin err, lets go with disasters last turn.

On the Pind front:
Pind wiped the cavalry stack. Honestly I should have done a sim for this one, all the material I'd seen of Pins v 22 cavalry, but did not. From the looks of it Pind lost a lot of his CHKs and a few knights, so he certainly took losses, but def a huge hammer gain for him.



Razed the cities to get the culture pressure off. I probably should have made this compromise earlier, I could have had both of these cities razes and the one I lost up north, AND keep my cav stack if I hadn't been greedy.




Anyway, I probbaly have to use the artist on the holy city (or maybe one of the front cities, I'll look at the expected borders, but very probably the holy city. That'll give me a defensible front and hopefully I can hold the holy city and the 2 cities beyond it.



On the lovely new naval front (ie: PB13 redux)

Finharry declared war, moved a bunch of ships into forking locations, and razed a pretty unimportant city I took from CH. I think I'll hold most/all of my cities next turn (exception below), but a few of them are close calls. I had just enough troops to give every city I think a reasonable survival chance but I'm stretched thin.







This one is the weird. there are 3 galleons, so 9 troops, but didn't attack deshpite probably being able to burn a city. I kind of suspect some of these are empty. We'll see, if they aren't they can raze at least 1 city of their choice.

What should help is astro at EoT, then upgrades and overflow into frigates to clear out the intruding navy. Except OH frigates aren't far behind



Overall shot



Demos




Grand Strategy -
Well this is a huge setback. The romp through Pind is def over, I don't have the material and obviously can't transport it over right now. I'm going to for the immediate future just try to hold what I have and hopefully get some peace deals. I offered one to Pind just to see, but I doubt he'll take it.

The MAJOR fear is Krovice piling on. That would be... bad. I think in that scenerio we might be looking at "suck up anarchy, get into nationhood, draft EVERYTHING." That'll crash the econ, but should put a stop to any enemy advances. Frankly, I'm vaguely considering preemptively doing that just to send the signal to OH and Krovice that there will be no gains here. I really need to convince krovice to not start a war in the first place, not just deny them gains in the event they do, cause it'd still be pretty fucking bad for me.

If I can get ahold of the seas, or at least PART of the seas, that will hopefully free up some coastal garrissons whcih I can then transpot to Pind-land and put on the krovice border.

Broadly speaking, I bet this puts BGN in pole-position. I'm probably still in contention to win, but i doubt i'm the front runner in a few turns. Though really I might already have priced this in, b/c what is happening is pretty close to what I feared my geographic position would lead to.

[dtay]

Reflective Thoughts:

I'm mildly frustrated at myself for not being more, hmm, actively preventative. Both of these possibilities (Pind wiping the stack and Old Tourist naval bolt from the blue) were things I was considering as possibilities before they happened, yet I stumbled into the Pind situation anyway deciding it was a necessary risk if I wanted to advance further, and despite military build up didn't stop the Old tourist attack (though i certainly mitigated what could have happened if I didn't have rifles in most of the coastal cities...).

What I should have done:

Pind Case:
1) Should have simmed it, it was a high leverage sitaution, if there's a time to sim it was then.
2) Once I've backed him into all his collateral the roads really do make advancing pretty freaking difficult. I think what I should have done is what I'm backing into now: raze the next column of cities and great artist bomb the holy city, then Pind is basically stuck int he sitaution I was, can't advance or I'll first strike the stack with mine and win the exchange. While I would love to eat all of Pind, the holy city and 4 other pretty large and productive cities was a good enough prize to settle on.

Old Tourist Case:
1)Should have deterred, not prevented: The goal here isn't to stop him from doing tons of damage, frankly I'm going to probably limit them to a few city razes of non-vital cities. The real problem is the naval control (continents now split), and the risk of that this causes other people to join in (by which I mean Krovice). Which means the goal really should of been to deter Old tourist from even trying this tactic in the first place. Which means a fleet. They saw the narrow window of opportunity and struck (it helps they have city visibility).

So ideally I'd have had frigates to fight back. Which I will once I upgrade next turn. But I couldn't have done that in the past. What I could still have done is place caravels in the island blind spot (would have had to upgrade a trireme realistically), which would have stopped a lot of the surprise aspect and may have deterred them from trying at all.

None of that really matters going forward, so this is mostly a lessons learned post.

Forward going strategy is build lots of frigates, possibly go to ships of the line if necessary, reclaim the waters. Try to hold current cities on the pind continent. And get into Nationhood ASAP. And we'll see if the communism great spy is still possible, this might hand that to BGN.

[Ituralde]

Really appreciate the relfective and thoughtful responses you have written out here. I don't know what happens next, but it's nice to know that the quality of this thread and your posts will not be affected by it. There are always a lot of ifs involved in these games, but getting to see all the sides of a conflict laid out in such detail, really is a the heart what makes it so awesome to be a global lurker in this game!

So thanks again for the good reports!

[Mardoc]

I'm all for self-improvement, but I think you might be just a little too hard on yourself here.

Can't comment on Pindicator-tactics, except...um. How would you have simmed anything? The last screenie where I see substantial Chinese units was T168, and that looks like...18 units? Pretty sure 18 medieval units would not have been able to wipe 22 Cavalry. You arguing that you should have slowed everything by a turn and sent out singleton cavalry as scouts, or what? Information isn't free in civ.

Regarding the Aztecs - what would you have had to trade off to get a fleet capable of deterring them? Are you sure you would have rather had that than what you actually got?

[Commodore]

I was wondering if 19 had given you a bad lesson.

[dtay]

I'm all for self-improvement, but I think you might be just a little too hard on yourself here.

Can't comment on Pindicator-tactics, except...um. How would you have simmed anything? The last screenie where I see substantial Chinese units was T168, and that looks like...18 units? Pretty sure 18 medieval units would not have been able to wipe 22 Cavalry. You arguing that you should have slowed everything by a turn and sent out singleton cavalry as scouts, or what? Information isn't free in civ.

Regarding the Aztecs - what would you have had to trade off to get a fleet capable of deterring them? Are you sure you would have rather had that than what you actually got?

Re: Army -
I had a better shot of the Chinese army at one point (it might have been the turn I skipped reporting), certainly an exact sim is impossible since fog of war, so Pind can add stuff, but the vast majority of the troops that hit me could have come from stuff I saw, which I also knew wasn't up north since i did manage to scout that.

Re: Fleet -
Oh i didn't mean I actually could have gotten a fleet. No real way to do that. That would have just been the ideal, the realistic thing I could have done would be the caravel by the island where the northern forking galleons came from. Deter is probably slightly the wrong word for what I mean, since I in no realistic scenerio can actually respond and hurt Old Tourist, I mean more broadly dissuade from starting the war rather htan just holding them off successfully. Would catching them in the act of setting up have stopped them or would they just hit all south? Who knows, but that was a low cost move I think I could have decided was a good idea without foreknowledge of what was going to happen.

Re: 19 - assuming I'm getting the reference right, your stack was way larger (I think like 50-60 units right?) with lots of classical units to soak collateral, so I don't think it was a direct analog for this situation.

[dtay]

What I should have simmed off of:

[dtay]

Goodbye Colossus, I will miss you dearly


Luckily, I have a new Holy City to pretty much exactly replace your GNP contribution...



So that's a defensible front from a geography standpoint. I need more material over here though, luckily, Old tourist has actually left me some transport lanes...



Will it be enough? We shall see.

Location of the Devil's Fleet