[Spoilers] Dreylin's short visit to a late Era

[Dreylin]

OK, I think I misunderstood a bit of what you were suggesting; didn't notice until re-reading that you were bringing 2 wounded up from HB to cut 4 of ZO. I /think/ that's possible by landing the Rifles in ZO and using one of them to pillage the nearest road connection, but again I'm concerned that what he'll do is just pick off our wounded units instead.

A screenshot illustration:


The yellow dots are where we would have exposed units in the North, Red in the South. Many of these are wounded, but those who aren't can be hit by his Air Force so that an un-injured Inf - likely C1 or better - would have reasonable odds. If he's going to challenge us for ZO - and actions say that he will - then he's going to take all those battles to reduce our forces. This at a time when the majority of our stack is seriously injured and unable to counter-attack.

We have the advantage here of the first 1/2 of the turn to make a preemptive defensive strike; not doing so IMO gives him the initiative with uninjured units & first-strike Air.

[Dreylin]

That's reasonable sacrifices to win position.

7-9 units traded away for an extra turn or two doesn't seem like we're gaining a lot of position.

But the main thing is position. If you see some better opportunity for us letting DZ live you can consider retreating for now. But I think that DZ will give REM ZO without any battle and this will put us in even worse position that we have now even if we lose 7-10 units in siege and 5-7 by letting REM snipe other units down.

REM has 2turns of wading through culture before he can take the city, during which time we can beat him down if needed. Even at that point, if REM gets his stack opposite ours at ZO and then Donovan "gifts" the city to REM (either by attacking out at us, or just walking out), I'd say that was against the spirit of the game.

[OT4E]

I am not against waiting. The time can indeed work for us. My idea was to save some siege for counter attack, but it seems that it can be not enough. May be we indeed shall think how to threaten Percy, so he wont be able to bring reinforcements at least. Then we lock his stack, take ZO and eliminate it and then finally raze GM and the city behind it. We can also bring some settler from GP and/or Chickens. Everything is ok if we raze city and replant. Taking city of 15 is nice but it doesnt worth positional loses.

BTW are you sure that it will be REM's stack to be kicked if we put cavalry under it and declare? If we pillage road in the forest and perform this we probably earn some time and do not lose that much units.

[Dreylin]

I'm pretty certain that the person who declares has their units bumped, but I will run a test before proceeding.

[OT4E]

I think it is random or depends to the inner turn order. I am not sure though..

[Dreylin]

Well I ran a couple of crude tests and the results are interesting. It seems that:

In neutral territory the declarer will always be bumped:


I believe that this is done to prevent just the sort of shenanigans that we are thinking of.

Where things get interesting however, is that in a 3rd Party's territory the rules appear to be affected by turn order:


Here the turn order is Dark Blue - Red - Us/Biege - Light blue.

As you can see, the declaration has bumped the Red Lion off of ours, but ours has been bumped off the Light Blue one - so the earlier turn order has been bumped from the later.

I ran both tests multiple times with Random Seed on reload set in order to eliminate any sort of roll being used to determine the results.

Can we use this against REM? No, because he is later in the turn order than us. Conversely, he would be able to use it to his advantage against us if we gave him the opportunity ... which is all the more reason not to.

I think I'm decided on course of action, but I'll be reviewing the other fronts before committing.

[Dreylin]

t321 -

So the first thing I did was run the sweeps across Scooter's territory:






Starting to feel some alarm at the number of new Galleons in view here - especially with the potential for him to Fort through the marked tiles on the islands.

I took a look at what's visible in the East without a flight:


The added ships are a bit of a concern.

Then I ran a pair of Cavalry at S19 and lost them both at middling odds, so that city capture was off the cards.

And then I chickened out of hitting REM directly and flew a recon flight:


And then I panicked a little bit.

So I bailed on both the attack on Donovan and on hitting REM - not poking the bear even if it's about to poke us! I ran the Airship missions against Donovan's Capital, but I withdrew most of the Cavalry to the NW (in range of REM's stack):


I have enough Galleons set up to evacuate the 1-movers next turn.

And then I switched civics:


And changed a few builds:


And maybe a bit of whipping & Drafting as well. Maybe an overreaction, but that can be corrected next turn if the worst fails to materialise...

For reference, here are the stacks we can see:

[OT4E]

Well, security is the most important thing. Let's see how the situation develops. But I really thing we need industrializing. People will switch back on building research and we will again be in chasing position.

[Dreylin]

Tell you what, if we're not at war with someone other than Donovan already this turn, I promise to think about putting some Factories in queue, OK?

[OT4E]

Tell you what, if we're not at war with someone other than Donovan already this turn, I promise to think about putting some Factories in queue, OK?

Since nobody is joining game, I have serious doubts on it