[SPOILERS] Parkin brings the rain down in Africa: Churchill of Zulu

[Grimace]

Turn 225

Seven continues his rise this turn. He founded Cereal Mills and build the Cristo Redentor. He’s also drafting the crap out of his cities. Observe:



Gawdzak captured another one of wetbandit’s cities, this one through amphibious assault, it looks like. At least the city is not really near Gawdzak’s borders:



I checked to see if there were any strategic resources wetbandit needs, but he’s still got iron and horses, and he lacks the techs to make use of coal or oil (he has Drama, Constitution, Liberalism, Biology on me, but lacks Steam Power and any of the following techs, though he does have SciMeth).

Domestically nothing to report. I upgraded some more frigates to destroyers. Given that most of my border with both Seven & Mackoti is water, that seems by far like the best way to try to avoid having them crash into my empire like the Kool Aid Man. From what I have seen of mack’s amphibious stack, when I finish upgrading I should have near-parity in Destroyers. Of course, he’s researching Industrialism, so he’ll be able to build tanks and battleships in 2 turns. And I have no idea what to do about that. I can tech in that direction, but it’s going to be a while before I get there. I guess maybe go for Artillery for Anti-Tank units? I could get that a lot quicker, especially if I burn my GS for part of Physics.

[Grimace]

Turn 226

In another surprise-but-not-really-a-surprise event, Seven declared war on wetbandit and captured 3 of his cities right off the bat. Probably they were less well-defended because it wasn’t an active warzone at the time. Next thing you know, mackoti will pile on (though if I was mackoti I might take this opportunity to attack one of the other powerful guys while he’s distracted). Seven also completed Broadway this turn, which was a pretty fast build – around 10 turns, I think if he started right when he got Electricity.

Wetbandit switched to Slavery this round, and Seven switched from Theocracy to FR now that he’s done drafting the bulk of his military. Which is good for me, because now I can spread Confucianism to him again. It also looks like wetbandit lost his copper and iron, so I offered him a trade for both of those for 2gpt.

The AP vote came in and I was elected again, not that I can actually do anything. The only options I’ve been getting were to stop trading with X or open borders with all members. Tried the second one and it failed, so now I don’t bother.

Domestically, almost all of the mines are now railroaded, and I’m starting to link my empire together. I’m about 6 turns from having Biology, so let’s hope I make it there!

Here’s a shot of the power graph, just so you can see how everything is right now:

[Grimace]

Turns 227 & 228

Well, an interesting couple of turns. Seven & mackoti made peace; I wonder if there were any concessions one way or the other? Mackoti built the Pentagon…whee! And he’s now heading for Plastics.

Seven got himself a GM, and has been making wetbandit his whipping boy. He captured 4 cities last turn. Wetbandit turned down my offer, so I don’t know if he just didn’t want to do it or is getting them from another source.

Still not much happening for me. I’m 2 turns from having Biology, which should be a nice boost. Railroads are mostly up – about 75% of my cities are now connected by railroad, which will help massively whenever an invasion finally occurs. I’ll be able to bring reinforcements wherever they are needed quickly.

Next GP is in 2 turns; if it’s a GS, we get 2 bulbs, otherwise we get a Golden Age. Probably the Golden Age would be better overall, but I’ll take either. I’m working on getting Machine Guns into all of my cities so I have a chance of defending against aircraft. And that’s about it. Nothing much else to report.

[Grimace]

Turn 229

Mackoti joined the dogpile on wetbandit and captured a city. Gawdzak captured 3 and Seven captured 2. wetbandit got a GG as a result of the battles, but so did Seven. It's a bloodbath...I feel a little sorry for him.

Mackoti (at least I'm pretty sure its mackoti) has a privateer in his territory, but near a stack of my naval units. I was seriously tempted to waste it just on principle, but why poke the lion if I don't need to. It's not like a privateer can really do much damage to an oil-based navy. I have decided that if it ends its turn in my territory, though, I'm going to kill it.

Other than that, the same ol'. Biology comes in next turn. Since I'll be going to 0% I'm not hugely worried about what to do next, because it's partly going to depend on my next great person. So we'll see that in 2 turns.

[Grimace]

Turn 230

Nothing of note happened, but...

Turn 231

Mackoti opened up a big can of whoopass on me. He captured 7 cities, including my capital and the confucian holy city, in a lightning amphibious assault. His tanks, infantry, and riesengardes smashed my rifles and cavalry (and other obsolete units) into bloody pulp. He crushed the destroyers and frigates I had in place except for a single destroyer and two frigates. I used the frigates to pillage some of the fisheries so he doesn't have immediate access to them (because they wouldn't do much against his destroyers and battleships), and my one destroyer I attacked his stack with the best odds (about 23%) and lost. The rest of my navy is completely unable to get to this section of water, so they're basically out of it.

He captured Antelope (capital), Duiker (one of my better cities), Quail, Porcupine, and then the three I captured earlier from Haram in the west -- Sitatunga, Topi and Vulture. He also neutralized my only active oil field. I have another one in my territory, but I hadn't built a well there as I was using workers to build railroads. Fortunately for me, Seven offered me oil (which I accepted), though it won't help me much since he captured every single city on that body of water and the only thing I need it for right now is naval units.

I launched a counter-attack out of Bonobo where I had been stacking units for the mackoti theater at Antelope to try to recapture my capital. Six cannons, 8 cavalry, 2 rifles, and a cuir attacked his stack in an epic battle. All of the cannons died, but did decent collateral damage first. 3 cavs and the cuir successfully withdrew from their attacks, and one cav killed a machine gun, the rest all died. I launched another counter-attack at Antelope out of Wildebeest (which had also been stacking units for the SE theater). 10 cavs and 6 cannons. This one fared a little better because of the damage already done to the units in the city. 1 of the cannons survived, and 9 of the cavs did, though none without damage. His forces in the city are severely weakened, though. From the cities he already captured, he can only reinforce to Antelope with 2-movers, as there is one tile of my culture still in the way, so one-movers can't make it in time. Even so, I doubt I have sufficient units to capture it back. Unfortunately, the cities that he has fewer units in are the ones behind his new lines and I can't get to easily.

He also moved a stack forward and is threatening Nyala, which is the city I had on our land border. I had a number of catapults stacked in Nyala, which I suicided on his stack there because they have a better chance of doing something useful that way than sitting on defense. I barrage promoted them and sent them out, and they died to a man, but they did weaken his stack, taking his two tanks down to 21/28 and damaging some of his riesengardes. Unfortunately, he's got a big stack. I also attacked out with the cavalry and cuir I had in the city (again, better for them to attack and die than sit on the defensive) and knocked one of his tanks down to .6/28 (but couldn't quite kill it).

Since most of my cities were already building units, there wasn't much else to do in that respect except to whip those than can be whipped and move some units forward to fight against his units when they move forward again.

Unfortunately he massacred a good portion of my modern units (Porcupine was another staging city, and my capital and Duiker were both garrisoned with a decent amount of rifles/cav and a machine gun or two), so the majority of what's left is obsolete and useless on the modern battlefield. And my income was cut by 60%, so I can't afford too many upgrades. I upgraded some defensive units in Nyala, but that's all I could afford to do. For all intents and purposes, he's defeated me -- even if I survive (someone else attacks him, for instance, and attracts his attention), I'll be a shadow of what I was.

So we'll see what happens. I'll update again for sure next turn!

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Nice report. Hang in there and fight to the last man.

[Old Harry]

Wow, that's brutal .

[Grimace]

Turn 232

Mackoti took 4 more cities this turn, Nyala (not surprising, though it's annoying my whipped defender never got a chance to be produced since he took the second half of the turn), New Fox, Bonobo, and Hippopotamus.

I was able to ravage one of his stacks, though. He had a relatively weak stack heading towards a city that just had 1 Impi as a defender. Luckily, with railroads, that stack was in range of the force I had on Haram's border -- 10 cav,s, 4 cannons, 8 cats and 2 rifles (I left the obsolete units in place). With that I was able to severely hurt his stack of knights, riesengardes, cavalry and infantry. I killed 3 knights and an infantry, and every other unit is below 50%, most of them below 25%, and a number of my cavalry withdrew. I also captured 2 workers he had sitting in an adjacent tile for some inexplicable reason. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that stack is now too weak to take the city, but sadly he has plenty of units around.

I did realize that he cannot eliminate me, certainly not easily, though. I have 2 cities on the other side of haram from him on a separate land mass, and I have 1 island city. Neither of those are adjacent to the body of water where he has his navy, so the best he can do is conquer my continental cities, then build up a navy on the other side and try to do another amphib assault. Fortunately, I have an decent navy there (it was the body of water shared with haram, so I had a lot of naval units here from our last war and a few more added since then) -- 6 destroyers, 1 ironclad, 8 frigates, 6 galleons, 2 galleys. Of course, my production will suck, but it looks like I'm still going to be around for a while.

[Grimace]

Turn 233

Mackoti continues his steamroller and takes another two cities -- but I stopped him cold with my attack on his stack the previous turn. He didn't move forward to that city at all (he's still 2 tiles away) and brought up reinforcements. On the other hand, he only has 1 tank, 2 cavs, and 3 knights in that stack, all of which are seriously wounded, so he'll have to move at 1 tile at a time because there's no way in hell that will take the city. He'll need his infantry and riesengarde's to do that. Which gave me time to upgrade the Impi to a machine gun, and my remaining (undamaged) catapult to a cannon, so I'll be able to put up a stronger defense. I'll still lose, but I want to make him pay cash for it.

The other part of my plan is to move my galleons down to the most eastern part of my civ and start evacuating units to my island/other continent. There's nothing I can do to stop him, so I'm thinking I should try to save as much as I can. I already disbanded all of my workers on the continent (as I have plenty for the 3 cities I'll have left), so if I can pull out a few boatloads of modern units that will help me hold onto my remaining cities. I'm half-expecting haram to attack the two on his continent at some point, and more defenders is not a bad thing.

[Grimace]

Turn 234

Interesting turn. Mackoti continued his advance, capturing 2 more cities, but Jackal is still holding out (which is where I stopped him before). However, he has overwhelming force in place, so I retreated the cavalry units that were in Jackal and put them on my galleons (only a 2 mover could make it to the coast) so they can be ferried to the island. Along with his capture of those two cities, he took out my source of horses so I can't build cavalry any longer, which was another reason to save them.

Haram decided to take advantage of the weakening of my southern border and moved forward to capture Yak (which used to be one of the cities he captured from GJ and I took from him) and razed Ape, the little filler city I used to help maintain the border. He then offered me peace after those two acts. I, of course, turned him down. I have a superior navy the body of water we share that has been unaffected by mackoti, so I figured now is a good time to use it. I sent 7 destroyers into his territory, pillaged Tiflis' fish, and then sank 7 of his frigates that he had stacked just behind the city. Most likely next turn he will move them all into Tiflis so I can't continue to destroy them, but I began exacting the cost of his attack from him. I expect he may push forward more and try to capture more cities, which is what I would do in his place, and I can't stop him as my continental military is a joke now...a handful of rifles and machine guns and a bunch of obsolete units. He'd have a much tougher time taking the two cities I have to his south as I've been stacking modern units in them for a while.

I've also been using my frigates to pillage the sea resources of the cities mackoti has captured since I can't do much else with them. I'm pondering using my galleons for an amphib assault with those cavalry I retreated if mackoti leaves a city underdefended next turn. We'll have to see if it's worth it.