[SPOILERS] William discovers a source of horse. FDR of Mongolia

[WilliamLP]

So yeah, there went a couple of months with no reports. I'm not sure there has been much interesting to say though, from the point above the game as a duel for the continent was decisively won and a tactical exercise to turn this into conquering the actual land. Here's a recap from screenshots I took though:

Turn 111:




The hill NNE of Toronado changed owners between turns, so I had to jump on this, though it was going to be a grind. I'm pretty sure Dreylin didn't antipate this because there were no cats in position. At the same time I had 15 rifles on galleons to take Pan Galactic in the west which had 7 rifles in it.




It turned that that 15 vs 7 was about the right number needed to take the city over the sea.




So as expected the HRE mini-stack died in a rout but he had 24 cavs to hit my force. I had 8 rifles coming around the sea from the north while this was going on - they were looking for a target on the north but couldn't find it. (And I had to declare on Molach for passage).

So, a good looking log for this turn:






So Dreylin had the desperate idea to divert to Astro, but Pan Galactic was his Moai city, and one of only 2 ports, so I was pretty sure he'd abandon that.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 212:

I expected the counterattack to be bad, but I didn't know it would be this bad:




I guess he was able to promote more Formation units than I expected. But I had rifles on boats swinging back around and workers to build a fort for unloading + moving in the same turn, to give him a chance to over-commit to attacking back.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 213:

So I backed off the wounded Cavs I had left onto the hill and put a few rifles there, and was thinking Dreylin might think I was weaker in the west than I was (with the rifles on boats).




So he did break that stack but with the fort and unload play:




So that's a decisive result in a duel, though obviously it's disastrous for relative standing against other peaceful empires in the world.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 214:

There was a little bit more skirmishing of what was left in the west:







That's what I had left and what he had left in the area, showing some heavy depletion.

Meanwhile:




These were rifles which had G2 available via a general, and rwith engineering, rifles can move road -> enemy hill -> attack. (But they can't move road -> road -> hill -> move... this isn't obvious at all unless you know it or have simmed it.)

It turned out that he only left 1 rifle in Boca Juniors though, so 3 G2 rifles were enough to take it:






Sadly I still had to raze this.

At this point, I was considering making the big final push down the middle with cannons. But... I wasn't sure of it, and time was on my side, obviously, with Infantry and rails coming soon.




What I know from experience is that if I'm going to move onto enemy culture in range of siege, I'd better have about twice what I'd think I need at the first glance.




Demos with Assembly Line turned on:




The bulk of my highly promoted Cavalry, some going back to the MYKI war, were lost in these turns.

As you can see in my unit composition, I was running 100% gold for several turns and spending all of it on upgrades, including on frigates because I didn't want to be an easy target for TBS or Harry. (As is the rule, you don't always have to beat the bears, but you just have to be less tasty than someone else nearby.)

[WilliamLP]

Power graph aftermath:




So we can fast-forward about 15 turns here...

This was time to get Assembly Line and railroads, cash-upgrade most of my rifles, get my third GA and build up some more.

During this time Harry and TBS got artillery for destroyers so the the only place where my boats could be relevant was to guard against Molach, so I was moving them over there.

Somewhere in here I made a play to unload some Infantry on the north coast, and made a play to raze Gargle Blaster with cavs. I could make moves like this because I had a massive visibility advantage.

Also in this time, Boldly was going to settle a city on the north part of the continent in what was now neutral land, but he only had a couple of infantry and no support so I declared and stopped him. So, yeah, I don't care how much stronger than me you are, if you're attacking from the other side of the world you need more than that.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 230, bit of an interlude, Harry was using my land to stage quite a strike!




He declared on Dtay, but he ended up actually attracking TBS. In the end I don't think he got what he wanted out of that. But then I'm not following the larger picture of the game beyond my continent very closely. Lurkers know far more than me I'm sure.

[WilliamLP]

Turn 232:

So 232 was when I decided to try for the final armageddon push against HRE after having a basic rail net in place and several turns of drafting.

If I'm going to eliminate the Civ, I'm going to have to take the cannon hits sooner or later.




So this was 29 defenders (infantry + 3 machine guns) and some siege vs 8 cannons and 22 cavs and 16 rifles which could be hitters. I didn't sim this at all, so wasn't sure what kind of result he'd get if he attacked with everything... but when I've got infantry vs rifles I figured it couldn't be that bad. And at worst he'd wound all his units and lose his cannons.

And meanwhile:




That's a strike force on his capital of 15 rifles, 3 mgs, and 24 cavs. If I had planned better I probably would have gotten some cannons into this.

I know it can be a really bad idea to split stacks, but I thought I could get away with it being this far ahead.

This was also the best time to attack I thought, since it was right when things broke out between Harry and TBS, so the time where the chance they'd be opportunistic was the lowest.

[WilliamLP]

So how bad was the first strike from Dreylin?






So in terms of ratios, this isn't great, but him losing 7 cannons and 5 cavs is actually quite huge.

In the future I'd want a little bit better numeric ratio than this. Also I wasn't sure if he would be able to get flanking kills with the RtR reduction, but he did get a few. I'd want to calculate that better and bring enough siege that the damange would spread more and this wouldn't happen.

At least, he wasn't able to bring the stack down enough for attack with Rifles into Infantry made any sense.

Drafting some more more and moving in some more reinforcements for next turn:




As expected, he was at too much of a disadvantage to do anything in the north vs his capital.






Quite the haul here! I had no idea HRE had Notre Dame or Great Wall actually. ND in particular isn't a non-factor in this war, several cities are at happy cap right now. And fortunately I can defend this city now and don't need to raze.

[WilliamLP]

235 was a resting turn after getting a morale medic 3 cav onto my main stack.

He tried to attack into me but he took a lot of Cav losses.

Turn 236: we now up to the present time.

And... HRE is officially broken now. I got the chance to attack him with a cannon stack.

I had some random number moments like




But those happen and mean less later on the game.









I don't think even an attack from Harry to the south can save HRE now, and Dreylin should have 2 turns to play.

And so... what's next?

The main options are: 1. Get to destroyers and make a play at Molach. 2. Isolationist paradise!

If you've ever read my game reports before you may be able to guess where I'm leaning...

[fluffyflyingpig]