[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[Cyneheard]

Pindicator's asking for a sub in Civ General - does that change anything? I wouldn't think so, since I bet if you tried to hit his replacement, that person would go all-in to mess you up.

[rho21]

And I don't think Airships can hit units on transports, so as long as you have the superior navy, the worst he can do is reinforce the city with more inferior units (which you can kill, and then, if you haven't taken the city yet and your navy is too exposed, the Galleons can just pull back, leaving a bunch of dead Dreylin units).

(thoughts from a ded-lurker)
Airships can damage the navy though, so it needs to be significantly superior to a possible counterattack. Especially if the ironclads are slow and left behind.

So, looking a bit further ahead and assuming REM joins in and all goes to plan (and this is a battle to the death), how does the split of land work out?

As I understand the map wrapping, REM borders ex-Gasparland to the left, (ex-)Donovanland to the right, pindicator below and BGN above. There is therefore a boat route from REM's capital to the Donovan-Dreylin isthmus. Any other attack routes I've missed?

Meanwhile you border ex-Gasparland above, Dreylin's core below, (ex-)Donovanland to the left and pindicator to the right.

I suspect you should look to cede all of ex-Gasparland to REM, plus everything in Donovan's land except the eastern coast, and push hard for controlling as much as possible of Dreylin's core land. At some point BGN would be likely to join in to grab some of Dreylin's western core. Trying to claim ex-Gasparland might lead you either into conflict with REM or force them out of the war due to a lack of attack routes, to tech up while you're still fighting.

This is all rather blue-sky thinking, but I think it's worth having a vague overall strategy in place before the war starts. Does that roughly match your thoughts?

[Dp101]

Ehhh, that plan sounds like a lot of production down the drain for not much of a territorial gain.

[Sullla]

I'm afraid that does not square with my thinking; we have both tactical and strategic reasons to push hard for ex-Gaspar lands. I will post with illustrations tonight.

As for REM, he will get whatever land he manages to secure for himself and nothing more. We still have no assurance he's actually planning on doing anything to help us. And if this succeeds - a big if - he's our top competition to win. This is a No Diplo game; there are no real allies here.

[scooter]

A few stray things.

I tried to be diplomatic in the tech thread, so I'll be more blunt in here and say what I'm really thinking . May as well document it. This is the risk you run when you play your turn spread across 24 hours in a game with a 24 hour timer. If doing so impacts you in a negative way, that is your problem. It sounds like from his most recent tech thread post REM knew there was a chance BGN would attack, which makes this even more on him. REM plays about half of his turns in multiple chunks spread across long periods of time, so this was kind of inevitable. I honestly have no problem with him doing that, but the trade-off is that if he accidentally gets double-moved because of what he was doing, I don't have tons of sympathy.

So unless there's some sort of evidence BGN was intentionally trying to exploit this, I think it's "tough luck" and play on. Just my two cents. I do trust Brick though, so if he looks at the situation and disagrees, I won't complain.

I feel like I should state for the record (mostly for when REM reads this after the game) that my opinion here has softened a fair bit the more I've thought about it. I do think neither player was trying to do anything nefarious, and really that's all I care about. Unfortunate that it turned into a tangled mess, but I don't think it'll have much of a negative impact on REM.

Pindicator's asking for a sub in Civ General - does that change anything? I wouldn't think so, since I bet if you tried to hit his replacement, that person would go all-in to mess you up.

I don't think it'll change anything unless there's some drastic side effects I'm not anticipating.

I'm afraid that does not square with my thinking; we have both tactical and strategic reasons to push hard for ex-Gaspar lands. I will post with illustrations tonight.

As for REM, he will get whatever land he manages to secure for himself and nothing more. We still have no assurance he's actually planning on doing anything to help us. And if this succeeds - a big if - he's our top competition to win. This is a No Diplo game; there are no real allies here.

Yeah, agreed with this. I'm not interested in running a charity here. Besides, REM has plenty of skill and hammers to get his own land - he definitely doesn't need our help.

[rho21]

I'm afraid that does not square with my thinking; we have both tactical and strategic reasons to push hard for ex-Gaspar lands. I will post with illustrations tonight.

Excellent, sounds like the sort of discussion / explanation I was hoping to prompt.

We still have no assurance he's actually planning on doing anything to help us.

Yeah, I was predicating my post on that assumption, and I know it's a big one. Worth considering though. I would also be interested to hear your thoughts on how this war might proceed if you're fighting alone (or with only token assistance), and whether it will just end up with REM teching ahead and winning.

As for REM, he will get whatever land he manages to secure for himself and nothing more. And if this succeeds - a big if - he's our top competition to win. This is a No Diplo game; there are no real allies here.

Mm, absolutely. REM's not going to wait around for you to take everything, though, so there has to be a plan to either:
a. share the land with REM, but claim the larger / more valuable share
b. attack so as to cut off REM's own avenues of attack, thus claiming the vast majority of the land for yourselves.

I take it you're of the latter viewpoint.

Anyway, very much looking forward to your illustrations later.

[Molach]

I'm still exclusively following this thread. Good piece of work it is too.

What do you think of REM replying to your horse+iron+fish+def.pact offer with just def.pact?

I was thinking that he might have said "yes" to mutual protection against dreylin (whatever that may mean), and "no" to be allies in an attack.

My understanding of these deals are that strategic resource-for same resource are alliances, health for health means peaceful intent or NAP.

Anyway, I wish you luck in this great and noble undertaking, this great Crusade towards which you have striven these many turns now. The eyes of the lurkers are upon you.

[Sullla]

We have a new turn! I know a lot of the readers were anxious for another turn to begin - believe me, I've been in that position with Civ4 turns more often that not. However, both scooter and I were off traveling during the holiday weekend, and the paused time was a real blessing. We should be back to the regular schedule now.



REM popped another Great Merchant at the start of this turn. (He really seems to like them; I wonder if he's been running lots of them deliberately, or if these have come as a result of low-odds dice rolls?) Donovan also moved a Fast Worker into our territory, which is now sitting inside Radio. He might gift this unit to us, hard to say. Poor Donovan won't be around for much longer.



Here's the real news for the turn: Dreylin has picked up Biology tech! Looks like their strategy is clear: whip for production using the Kremlin, and then run a whole lot of Representation specialists for commerce. It's a late era version of the specialist economy, wrought on a grand scale. I continue to be amazed at how different teams are running such different economic setups in this game, it's been fascinating to watch.

I think this confirms that we have to hit Dreylin soon. If he consolidates on 30 cities while everyone else has 15-20, running masses and masses of Representation specialists off of Biology farms, that's going to be a game over situation for the rest of the field. I don't think we'll ever get a better chance than this, when we have higher tech units with tons of free promotions. If we lose, we lose, but sitting around doing nothing is a sure recipe for death.

So let's talk grand strategy:



Here is an overview map of Dreylin's territory. His original core is in the west, the former Gaspar/Noble land is in the east, and Donovan's captured territory is off to the south. Those cities are still choked by Indian cultural borders now, sitting around uselessly in resistance, but when Donovan is gone, there will be no stopping Dreylin.

The most important city on this map is the one that contains the Kremlin. Unfortunately it's sitting in the city of Llamas, which is the hardest one to reach in Dreylin's territory. They rushed the wonder with a Great Engineer very early in the game, and chose a wise location to put the thing. If it were in a coastal city, I'd suggest we stage a daring raid to go raze the place but it's clear that isn't going to happen. We're going to need to work around Dreylin's super-charged whips, with no easy solution.

Dreylin has a vast amount of territory, but because he conquered Gaspar initially, he also has an enormous space to defend. This empire is ridiculously stretched out, with borders everywhere and close to two dozen cities open to attack. My strategic plan of attack will be based around exploiting that vulnerability, that and working around Dreylin's large army, hitting him where it isn't.

Let's zoom focus on the border with Dreylin north of Textile Island:



These four cities are the former underbelly of Gaspar/Noble, and represent our best chance to go on the offensive. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I believe these are the best cities to try and capture. There are two main reasons behind this:

1) Dreylin's main army is sailing around in ships off in Donovan territory. Those units are very far away from this part of the map. We can strike here and make gains while the army is elsewhere. (And Dreylin's military count is decreasing somewhat; he was at about 1650k a couple turns ago and is down below 1500k now. Obviously worth it but Donovan is taking at least some units with him.)

2) Attacking here strengthens our defensive position. Think about this for a second. We have a lot of cities on this particular sea, the one north of our capital that surrounds Textile Island. Defending all of these locations will be really tough. However, if we can snipe off these cities, Dreylin cannot reach this body of water. That would free up our ships to go elsewhere, and lessen the burden of how many cities need big garrisons of infantry. If the war really went well, we could even push further north and try to occupy Gaspar/Noble territory in full, although I think that's getting ahead of ourselves.

The former Gaspar/Noble lands are our natural target for conquest, since they do not extend our borders horizontally across the map. We would have a lot of "safe" backline cities if we were able to grab some of this land. Here's how I would set up for an attack:



The main thing is not promoting any of our units ahead of time to retain the element of surprise. Dreylin might not realize that all of our naval units will have 10 XP and will be able to take Navigation II promotion out of the gate. I think that we can sell a story of just being on a defensive posture right up until we strike.

We need 2 ironclads on the tile where we currently have our frigates. Their job is to move 4 tiles and sink the defending Dreylin Ships of the Line to clear a path to Dolphins. We can stage a couple of galleons in the south in what looks like a defensive position, only to have them also move 6 tiles and hit Dolphins immediately. Another galleon can stage SW of Spinning Jenny, move through a fort tile that we complete the same turn, and hit Hedgehogs (which we would raze; it's not worth defending right now and we could always refound after the war). After that, we could push further east or sail north through Dolphins into the lake to attempt to raze Geese, the city behind it. Lots of options here if we can pull off a successful first strike.

This is the core of my battle plan, this early strike. The hardest thing is getting the ships into position, especially the ironclads which will only move at 2 spaces per turn before promotion. Spinning Jenny can't build them either since they have to come out a city with state religion for the Theocracy bonus. I'll keep investigating and see what I can figure out for the logistics. Contact Process seems like the best bet, although it's still finishing its coal plant, and then will need a drydocks after that. Maybe one from there and one from Haber Process.



Our northwest coast will be somewhat tricky to defend. We're going to need 3-4 infantry apiece in Radio, Dynamite, and Penicillin. I plan on just defending here at the start of the war, making Dreylin nervous with his airships wondering what we're planning. His core is just northwest of this area, and I expect him to have a good deal of ships around. If things are going well and we want to get aggressive, we can always load up our infantry and move to the tile 5 north of Dynamite, where we can threaten four or five different Dreylin cities in one move. My instinct is to be defensive until we know that our cities are protected.



This area to the west is going to be dangerous; Hydraulic Ram will be tough to defend. That's because Dreylin's main army is going to be very close to this spot at the end of his war against Donovan. He's going to take Sector 19 (which we do not have a realistic chance of sniping - sorry, it's not happening, at least not right now) and then swing west to finish off Donovan. That will leave the ships just to the west of Hydraulic Ram, and since it isn't on a hill tile, we'll definitely need a lot of infantry here. I'm thinking that Pasteurization will just build infantry for this city and Battery, which is our other exposed city here.

I would dearly love to capture Sector 19 and raze Ferrets. That would trap Dreylin's navy in a fairly useless part of the map, south of Donovan's territory where it can't do much of anything. However, I think it's beyond our means at the start of this conflict. If things go well, Sector 19 will be one of our top prizes to target.



Then there's the deep south below Battery and Kaplan Turbine. This is the heart of Dreylin territory, and I don't expect us to make progress here for a long time. We'll be on the strategic defensive with Dreylin cities all over the southern part of this sea. We'll be chopping out the forests to deny defensive cover to invaders, and the capital will build infantry for some time just to defend our island plants down here. Still, I'm probably most concerned about our ability to hold here.

I would dearly love to raze that island city of Dreylin's on the first turn of the war. I think two galleons with 6 infantry inside could manage that without too much trouble: stage next to Kaplan, move through a fort SW of the city, get down there and raze the bugger, then get the heck back to our territory safely. Razing that city would deny an airship base for Dreylin and make his naval logistics a lot tougher, as he could no longer move through the center of the little island. We could always refound there later in a postwar world, maybe even replacing that spot with two cities for the northern and southern seafood resources.

Overall, I think we need more than 5 turns to prepare for war but less than 10 turns. Say Turn 322 or Turn 323 at a roughball estimate. As I wrote over the weekend, we stack up military power REALLY fast once we pop into Police State civic, adding well over 100k power each turn. The downside is that our economy quickly goes into the toilet, due to the combination of Police State + Vassalage (both High upkeep) with no economic benefit to boost them along. I think it's worth it though, and as a Spiritual civ, we can always swap back to something else in 5 turns. In big picture terms, we'd like to fight for about 10 turns and secure enough land for 5-10 more cities, then go back into peaceful civics, tech up to Combustion/Industrialism, and prepare to hit someone again. I'm dubious that we can pull that off, but it would be ideal if it were somehow possible.

I wrote the worker micro for the current turn in our shared Google docs. I didn't write the city micro down, but I did put add some suggested builds in-game. I'll have more time to work on that tomorrow. Win or lose, this should be fun.

[scooter]

Turn 316

First off, I didn't see Biology next coming. That's bold. That confirms for me that we basically have to move now. It's a win-now move from them. It also means they're still pretty far away from stronger units. The time is most definitely now.



Most of those cities completing units will be completing unit/turn for awhile.



The break-even point for infantry/turn is 48 base hammers/turn with 135% modifiers. Spinning Jenny is there even without accounting for overflow, which makes 3 cities over the threshold. A few others are pretty close.



War civics time.



Should we freak out more about the Dreylin Biology foodcount or our hilariously pathetic GNP? Disregard and build units.

[scooter]

As for the war plans - I kept trying to come up with a plan that made sense for ex-Donovanland, and it didn't really make sense. So I think ex-Gasparland while attempting to hold the rest as Sullla outlined is definitely the way to go.

We may want to slip in a spy or two so we can get some visibility in Dreylin's land. It's especially valuable to figure out where his airships are, that way we can work back and figure out what tiles he can see by patrolling them. It's going to be super hard to totally blindside him due to the airship advantage, but if we can get an idea of where in Gasparland he's got them, that might help a lot. Any thoughts on this?


Mild programming note: on a brief work trip for the next couple days. I should be fine to play the turns in roughly the same normal window, but my availability may be a little spotty.