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

[Dreylin]

Also, pindicator took the Iron, so we got a 4th upgrade this turn.

Scooter is out of Police State, but REM finished Fascism last turn, so might be on his way in.

[OT4E]

Oh, why did you waste catapults? The minor damage they did will be recovered with promitions. Use catapults only when you are going to attack.
REM was first with Fascism, remember that phantom GG.

[Dreylin]

Well, CivStats suggests Yaks captured and Dogs burnt. Will see in a little while, I guess...

[OT4E]

Was there galleon in a range of Dogs? I thought it is DZ's cap, but I am not sure The one who attacks first wins here.

[Dreylin]

t323 pre-turn -

REM left us an interesting insulting offer:


Tempted to offer it back for 26gpt just to see if he's serious about negotiating something.

He discovered Steel in the inter-turn.

Here are the logs:


A lot of those battles were in the mid-60% range.

He doesn't have too much in the city now, but he punched past our Naval block and landed units from one of his Galleons to cut the road so we can't hit back. And now he pretty-much controls the sea, so we're going to be bombarded at Silkmoths, but no-where else is particularly vulnerable (this island has 5 units in the city).

He withdrew in the West:


You can see his Workers wheeling around to the South.

Donovan is also going to make us miserable by forcing us to defend Alpacas as well as Honey Bees. We can stuff some of the retreating 1-movers in and keep up the bombardment of his units though. Borders popped at his old Cap, and will pop again this turn, so we're reinforced there.

South of Dolphins, Scooter has just 1 Galleon ready to go this turn:


And in the North he's maneuvering some Frigates, but the Galleons are still out of range:


I'm treating Ferrets as "Crumple Zone" and bringing the units built there so far back down towards the Core.

My feeling is hunker down in Slikmoths and Honey Bees / Alpacas and see if he's really willing to negotiate a Peace (I'd be a lot happier doing so if he hadn't burnt Dogs ). Meanwhile, we continue the plan to attack Scooter as / before he moves into position for his attack.

[Dreylin]

I'll not be playing until this evening, so the game is open if you want to have a look around.

[OT4E]

I start from some non-constructive thoughts. Our mistake was to go for DZ, it triggered dogpile against us. 2 strong nations were developing without any obstacle and we still decided to hit the 3rd one. So we deserved what we've got. We should have hit scooter or REM while there were vulnerable. I know that the timing was so that we were a bit late in hitting them, but I think we should do it earlier.

Right now we are not making any threat to REM so he can either propose arrogant demands to us or keep cutting territory from us. Imho one of the mistakes we are still doing is letting him fortify in Glitch mode. We should use our air superiority there to eliminate half of his forces and kick him away from DZ's land at least. May be it is not too late, but looking at his incoming infantry I think it is.

I am not sure that attack on Dynamite is worth that. It is small city, if we could go for Haber Press at least, but I believe scooter can bring there dozens of infantries with his fast galleons.

We need a plan how to hit REM. It is the only way to make peace with him. And needless to say that giving him bribe is a plain suicide.

We also need to think of a Combustion race. I fear a lot that we finally make big naval stacks but those couple will come with destroyers and transports. Believe me upgrades are too expensive and our sail-based fleet will remain as it is. I am not trying to speak you off making fleet, because it is the matter of survival imho, but we need Combustion in 8-10 turns or may be earlier. So I think we cant afford any more upgrades, probably you were right we should have just given away Yaks. At least wasting catapults and not bringing in Cavalry meant we couldnt keep it even for 1 more turn.

For now I think we need to design some kind of attack on both REM and Scooter and make them defend instead of going for us and win some time to make factories and research. If we do not industrialize once we lose the game imho. Losing a city is not a big deal, it is just a settler and it's cost will go down if we get factories and power.

Unfortunately I do not have time to examine details and can mostly speak in general, I realise that the things are way more complicated for you.

[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

[Dreylin]

Yeah, for sure the attack on Donovan was a mistake, as probably was Biology before Steam-AL, but we're here now so let's move forward.

REM either held back his Eastern Airships or more likely rebased them South. I don't know why he hasn't killed our Explorer, but we are getting valuable info from him.

Our Cav stack will be on Galleons this turn, and if we line up for the potential attack on Radio, we also line up to be able to drop into Honey Bees and attack Glitch mode instead.

On a related note, the effort to make the most efficient use of our Galleons for unit shuffling is doing my head in, and taking a considerable amount of time - which is draining me further.

I do agree that Dynamite is not a prize in itself, but Penicillin is an important target to keep his fleet bottled below Dolphins and unable to reach our core from the South. I only hope we're not too late in trying to take it out.

[Dreylin]

Well, let's see what we can find to do with these, shall we?