[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[scooter]

Turn 322

Appears to be our last turn at peace. Let's do this?



I took a screenshot earlier showing all Dreylin cities, so I went through and marked all cities that made whips this turn. Basically all of them except Dogs. Dolphins appears to have completed an Infantry (or upgraded?) and then dry-whipped another one. Looks like an incoming Rifle 1E of the city. Cats whipped a unit, but if it's an Infantry it won't make it into Dolphins next turn. Things are going to be a lot tighter up here than we hoped, but at least we aren't talking about 5 Infantry (yet). If he mass-upgrades a bunch and cobbles together a half-dozen Infantry in here by next turn, we may have to think long and hard about this.

It's at least nice to see the lack of promotions.



Final setup in north. All Galleons have 3 Infantry on them. Dots:

Red: 6-move Galleon
Purple: The selected stack - see interface
Yellow: 1 Ironclad
Green: 6-move Galleon
Blue: 6-move Galleon



In the south, this gave me a brief moment of panic. The sign being misplaced last turn caused me to stage the 2xp Galleon on this tile, which is literally the only tile that could not possibly reach Dreylin's island next turn via one route or the other.

Fortunately I came up with a solution. I filled it up, and then I chained the units into the 0xp Galleon, and then returned the 0xp Galleon into Kaplan where it's been sitting for several turns anyway. From that tile, it can reach just fine, so all 12 Infantry are in play.



Red: 6-move Galleon + 6-move Frigate. This Frigate is only Frigate that cannot bombard next turn.
Yellow: Frigates capable of taking Nav1, therefore can bombard next turn.
Purple: 0xp Galleon + Privateer (5-move capable)
Blue-ish: Two 6-move Galleons

I realized we can't get the 6-move Galleons facing east because we were short 1 movement point that would have allowed them to return. I should have counted better on that. Oh well, it probably doesn't make a serious difference.


Now we sit back and hope Dreylin can't destroy us anyway.



REM - you are definitely not capturing that city. I just hope Dreylin can't pull a similar trick on us.



Still building more.

Apparently that's all I took for screenshots. Could have sworn I took a couple more, but my screenshots folder disagrees. I guess I was focused on the fronts. I queued more units everywhere. Notes:

* I 1-turned a cannon in Telegraph. I think that actually ought to hang out around the Radio/Dynamite area. If Dreylin counter-attacks, that area is his best bet since the bulk of his army is nearby. Hopefully we won't have to worry about that with REM occupying him, but I'd rather not take chances.

* Queued up a few ironclads. They can get into decent positions pretty quickly. I think we'll need to get a couple more of them because it's too easy for Dreylin to get odds on Frigates with Airships.

[Sullla]

Sorry about not posting anything yesterday; I was waiting for Dreylin to play his half of the turn, and he didn't finish until almost midnight. Scooter looks like he handled everything just fine though, very nice work on all of the unit logistics! Here's a few more pictures to complement the turn report.



Donovan offered to give us a few gold/turn for one of our rice resources; I went ahead and accepted. I hope that's not a problem. This only becomes an issue if we would lose one of our rice cities, and if that happens, we're basically dead anyway. We can cancel the deal in 10 turns (or we could cancel it by declaring war on Donovan in a worst case scenario, heh). I don't expect this to matter.

By the way, Donovan is still clinging to life with two cities, and the one in the middle of his former territory (Zoth Omnog or something like that) is causing havoc on Dreylin's recent captures. The Indian culture is squeezing all of them horribly. Keep hanging in there Donovan!



I also thought that I'd look at Dreylin's resource situation on the diplo screen. Dreylin and OT4E did 16 whips on their turn, after conducting about a dozen of them last turn. I'm assuming that they are also doing the maximum allowed 3 drafts each turn. That's going to raise a lot of infantry in a hurry, but it also causes a lot of unhappiness. This is one of the weaknesses of the whipping economy; it can keep up with a factory-based economy if those whips are powered by the Kremlin, but every whip does keep causing more unhappiness. I'm pretty sure that a lot of the Dreylin cities are carrying 2, 3, 4, or more unhappiness from whipping.

Now fortunately for them this is another one of those lush RB maps that tend to be the norm for Pitboss games, and for an Industrial start game, every city gets a forge and market to multiply happiness further. However, if we could remove some of these happiness resources, it might start to get a bit dicey over there. Dreylin's only source of ivory and silk are in former Gaspar territory, although unfortunately on the northern side of the land, so if we have enough success we could eventually deprive them of two resources worth +4 happiness. Their silver resources are also somewhat exposed; one is at the island city we're targeting, and the other is on the former Donovan island immediately northwest of Radio. This may be a worthwhile strategic target to pursue down the road.

For the curious, here's our city count going into the war:

Dreylin: 25
REM: 19
Scooter: 16

Scooter, I made two change to city builds, hopefully you approve:



I swapped Induction Coil from a galleon to an ironclad. Since we have 5 galleons in the south already, I didn't think that we needed another one. However, we could use another unsinkable ironclad for this region in case we would get engaged in fleet versus fleet action. I think we'll probably want to start building more land-based units here soon, as we likely have enough ships for the moment.



And I did something similar at Contact Process, swapping out the galleon for a cannon. I think we have enough galleons up here for the moment, and we're definitely going to want some more cannons. I completely agree with the cannon build in Telegraph too. Even if Dreylin does get a good number of infantry in some of these cities, our promotion advantage still gives us a good chance to capture them, albeit with more effort. We can always choose not to attack off of ships with Amphibious promotion, but instead land our units and then promote C2/Pinch instead. That gives us a 45% strength bonus against unpromoted infantry, and obviously that makes a huge difference. Add in some cannons, and we can rout the defenders. Dreylin still does not have Steel tech, which means no cannons for him. (Of course, he can always use airstrikes with his airships, which are probably even more annoying.)

Hopefully REM will play soon and then Dreylin won't take 48+ hours for his turn again. I'm eager to play the next turn! Sometime on Sunday would be perfect, we can do the turn on Gchat and see what happens. Should be interesting either way.

[antisocialmunky]

Hm, so I read 77 pages of of this in one sitting. I'm going to go and pass out now.

I'm dedlurking so there's no implication but I'm curious what you think team Pindicator will do. Its not like him to sit out a fight.

[Sullla]

If it felt like Turn 322 took forever to play... well, it did. The last turn took about 4 days in total, after extended pauses from both Dreylin and REM. But Turn 323 is finally here, and hopefully the pace will be rolling along at something closer to normal again.

REM captured two cities from Dreylin on his turn: Yaks and Dogs. The city of Yaks was the border city where we saw REM sieging up last turn. Here's what it looks like now:



REM has a lot of injured units, but C1/Pinch infantry beat unpromoted infantry without too much trouble. REM also picked up a Great General for his trouble; he already had the Great General from Fascism tech, so this gives him further options. I expect he'll build West Point somewhere if he hasn't done so already.

The other city of Dogs is further north in former-Gaspar lands. Here's the location from an old screenshot:



So Yaks and Dogs are now in REM's hands. That makes Canaries a sitting duck whenever REM gets around to attacking it. As for Silkmoths, the former Gaspar capital:



We can see into the city, and it's not very well defended. I'm highlighting the city of Dolphins here; Silkmoths has 1 infantry, some rifles, and some airships. REM should be able to take that relatively soon, and I don't think we should try to interfere with his offensive.

Over here, the borders of Dolphins took control of our rice resource, one turn after we traded our excess away to Donovan. Ummm, who was the idiot who did that? :mischief: More seriously though, I don't think we'll have too much trouble punch through and capturing Dolphins this turn. 2 infantry and 3 rifles are not going to survive against the 12 (highly promoted) infantry that we can attack with this turn. Note the lack of the blue glow: none of Dreylin's units here can take a promotion.

So I think we should be able to take Dolphins this turn, and possibly Hedgehogs depending on how the combat rolls go (and what we see to the north past Dolphins). We'd like to smash through Dolphins and target the city behind it (Geese) if possible before Dreylin whips/drafts a bunch of infantry to defend it. Hedgehogs is isolated and should be pretty easy pickings to grab. This is starting to look like a partition of the ex-Gaspar lands between our team and REM, although I should caution that that's still a long ways away from becoming reality.

Demos from the start of the turn before anyone engages in fighting:



GNP doesn't look quite as bad now that Golden Ages are starting to wear off for our rivals. Where will that Rival Best number in Soldier Count be by the end of this turn? We shall see!

Antisocialmunky, pindicator has been playing this game is completely checked out fashion for a while now. He did finish researching Assembly Line tech last turn, and he's not really that far behind our team, at least not in total land and number of cities. I expect that he'll wait and see which way the wind is blowing in this round of wars, and pile onto Dreylin if it looks like our coalition is winning, or alternately attack our team/REM if Dreylin would be winning. Pindicator also has the chance to attack BGN if he wants to claim more land against a weaker target. However, I think it's most likely that pindicator does nothing, because he doesn't seem to care about this game and is already off in greener pastures in Pitboss 34. I could be totally wrong, but that's my best guess.

Scooter, I'll be around on Gchat tonight if Dreylin manages to play his turn sometime today. Let's hope so. :)

[Tohron]

Wouldn't an also-ran like pindicator or BGN logically want to attack the side that's winning, instead of the side that's losing, in order to drag out the conflict, giving them more time to catch up?

[Abegweit]

Long time lurker (from back in Civ III days!). First time poster. I just want to thank all three contenders (you know who you are) for the effort they have taken show their thinking and to make this a superb game to watch! Thank you all so much (I'm making this same post in all three threads).

Can't wait to see the finale

[antisocialmunky]

My impression playing with Pindicator in the Locke/Cervantes game is he is pretty apathetic after the opening until there's a good fight to throw himself at. I think scooter said something similar. Also, great reporting to so far. I haven't read a thread in a single setting since that CFC Peaceful Conquest game.

Finally a Question: How do you see the end game of this war playing out? I think you've hinted at it but haven't really said anything concrete. The opening is obviously the securing of your N. Borders by executing that first strike on all the N. Sea Coastal Cities. Then follows the partition of Gasparia with REM but what after that? The partition with REM is really awkward since REM will lose most of its land borders with Drey when the naval invasion succeeds. If I were planning REM's grand strategy, I'd just go E and clean up DZ while no one is looking (seems like a DZ invasion won't take too many resources) - only helping you out if you guys are definitely doomed or winning. That or possibly taking a naval stack via your canal cities into your S. Sea to burn things down.

[scooter]

Quick check-in. Took a day away from the game yesterday while we waited. Notes:

* Dreylin didn't request more time in IT thread, so I expect he'll play his normal window tonight - ending sometime between 9-11pm EDT. Sullla - if you'll be around, we can chat during the turn. If Dreylin runs late, we can always push it back to tomorrow.

* Where did REM get all those promotions from? His units were not glowing yesterday, and suddenly they all have pinch? Am I misunderstanding how the glow works?

* Unit changes looked good to me (the lack of comment from me meant no objections).

* I'm a little concerned about our entire west coast (Hydraulic Ram up to Dynamite). Dreylin's still got a lot of units in that area. No GGs have popped up from that area recently suggesting the Dreyljn/DZ/REM front there is a bit of a stalemate. It's the only spot Dreylin can really hurt us from.

Hoping to not see many new units in a couple hours.

[Sullla]

Yep, I'm here! If Dreylin does play tonight, we'll try to do our turn before it gets too late.

[Sullla]

Well, we did attack Dreylin this turn as planned. Scooter will provide the full writeup (tomorrow, because it's past midnight for both of us); I'll just put the quick summary in spoilers for now:

Dolphins captured
Rats (Dreylin southern island city) razed
Hedgehogs reduced to 1 defender

We lost 4 infantry
Dreylin lost 4 infantry, 6 rifles, 3 cavs, 2 ships of the line