[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[antisocialmunky]

It seems like you are suggesting that you take peace and roll over The Dono. The original problem you were trying to solve with this war was lack of expansion. Gaining 2 cities while the first place player gets 4ish seems like a less than stellar outcome so it seems like you are forced to fight Dono or do something else to gain cities.

The problem of taking peace is the possibility that REM and Drey will come after you after also making peace as you are between them. The only way to prevent a dog pile afterwards from the games leaders is making yourself powerful enough (Commando Panzers? :D) that the player who attacks you first will get go on to lose the game. Taking peace might give you something like a 1984 Oceania/Eurasia/East Asia deadlock.

I dunno, part of me kinda wants more of this war Maybe switch sides and go after REM if they start winning this war really hard. We've always been been allies of REM Drey against the Evil Drey REM right?

[Elkad]

* This:



Dreylin apparently used one of his airship bombards on that. I don't know if it means anything? (It took me forever to figure out which Infantry it was he bombarded.)

Recon or clicking a city and hitting something at random have the same effect. So why not take the free damage?
Of course he risks an intercept if you have a MG in there, but you don't.

[scooter]

Couple more notes.



I decided to take a look at Sector19, and this would be a very easy capture for us if we went this route. Also: our southern naval stack (the Galleons anyway) could do this as soon as next turn - they're currently 12 tiles away from here. The ironclads could then function as the covering units. It's an option...



The other thing I want to touch on is this from last night. I double-checked in-game and then with a worldbuilder test, and we definitely can do this:

1) Move GG onto the same tile with the 9xp Infantry sitting 1N of Haber. Lead as Warlord bringing us up to 29xp. Do not promote yet.

2) Load the GG Infantry onto the Galleon and move it to this tile.

3) Take Morale promotion giving the Infantry an extra movement. Raze this city, killing 4 airships in the process.

4) Take as many promotions as possible to get the Infantry to Level 6, unlocking West Point.

Of course, this is assuming he doesn't have a Frigate protecting that tile 1 SE of this city, which he very well might because he should have visbility on this Galleon of ours. I can move the Ironclad 4 tiles (1N of the grass hill, 3N of Penicillin) and see if this spot is open?

-----

Sullla - very interested to hear your thoughts on how to proceed here. I lean towards trying the GG stunt if the city is uncovered and then see where that gets us. If not, we back off with this big naval stack (covering it with the nearby) Ironclad, try to get peace and figure out a plan, then take S19 from Donovan. Any thoughts?

Also, taking Hedgehogs this turn will be difficult. I haven't tested it, but I don't think our 4 wounded units on Galleons will be enough. Another wrinkle in the plan.

[scooter]

The problem of taking peace is the possibility that REM and Drey will come after you after also making peace as you are between them. The only way to prevent a dog pile afterwards from the games leaders is making yourself powerful enough (Commando Panzers? :D) that the player who attacks you first will get go on to lose the game. Taking peace might give you something like a 1984 Oceania/Eurasia/East Asia deadlock.

We would have Destroyers, Transports, and be well on our way to Panzers by the time the 10T finished. I hardly think they would come after us while much softer targets still exist. Dreylin and REM would be on equal-enough grounds that one of them attacking us would be handing the game to the other player.

Doesn't necessarily mean dropping out of the war is the right play, but I don't think those particular fears are well-founded.

[scooter]

Quick update:

* That spot 1SE of Ducks is indeed covered by a single Galleon, so that plan is out. Unfortunately there's no way to hit it that doesn't involve a 30% shot at it with our own Galleon.

* If we do want to bail out and tech real quick, my testing ingame says we could get Combustion in just 5T if we wanted.

[antisocialmunky]

What are the city counts for everyone now?

[Sullla]

Yeah, I'm still here, just been busy with work today and didn't have a chance to respond. I will be on Gchat tonight so we can discuss some of these issues and think about how to play things. I'm also leaning towards taking another city or two from Dreylin and then asking for peace; with infantry popping up everywhere, warfare is going to be too bloody to prosecute with success. We'll probably have to wait for panzers to make further progress.

If we can take and hold Dolphins, Hedgehogs, refound a city on the southern island, and capture Sector 19 from Donovan, that's a successful war in my book. A lot of "ifs" there, but about the best we could reasonably ask at this point in time.

[scooter]

Turn 324

Another eventful turn. Let's start out with a therapeutic measure.



And then let us never speak of that event ever again.

So the dilemma for this turn was what to do with Hedgehogs. It's got two Infantry in it here - a fresh 20h Infantry and a 18h CG1 Infantry. The only units that can attack it for us are the 4 shot-up units (already promoted at this point) you see at the bottom of the screen here. There would be 3 others, but I have a rule against discussing what happened to them.

Really didn't want to let Hedgehogs live another turn. Dreylin whipped something, so the city was going to have another defender next turn, plus it allows healing and maybe reinforcements. Plus I don't want to give REM the impression he can have the city. So after some deliberation, we decided to YOLO this thing. The gist is that if our top two Infantry (both around 14h or so but well promoted) could damage the two defenders, the even weaker Infantry (11-12h or so) could finish them off. One flawless loss would doom us.



14.6h pinch amphibious Infantry vs 18h CG Infantry: 35% lose (redlined!)
12.8h pinch amphibious Infantry vs Infantry: 34% lose (redlined!)
12.8h pinch amphibious Infantry vs redlined Infantry: 99.4%: WIN




11.6h Infantry vs redlined Infantry: 99.9% WIN



Here's the next dilemma. Really would like to keep to save on settler cost, and to ensure REM doesn't snipe it with an IMP settler. That stack of Dreylin's gave us some pause. We could stuff in a few more Infantry, but the city is on flatland, and Dreylin has Airships.

Ultimately we decided to bet on Dreylin leaving the city alone. I'm betting he's going to be more interested in Cats. We intend to offer peace, and doing so will allow Dreylin to probably fend off REM at Cats, whereas he probably can't hold it if he tries to counter-attack Hedgehogs. So we decided to keep it.



Here's this front after. I think we're good here. Famous last words.



Our Privateer was unable to get away, so here's his last vision before deleting. Dreylin defended this area really well. Airships sure don't hurt. I think I remember chatting with Brick about his proposed ruleset for this game and debating whether airships ought to be banned for an Industrial start. I think my opinion landed on "probably, but let's just see what happens." I think my opinion has landed on yes for a hypothetical future Industrial game FWIW.




Anyway, with nothing we could target (and the certainty of losing our whole fleet even if we did), we backed off. This is the prize.



We are not necessarily doing this next turn, but we have the option. The city is very lightly defended. If Dreylin gives us peace, we probably will go for it. Gonna really suck if Dreylin accepts peace and then captures this city.



I toyed with the idea of demanding some of that gold, but I decided against it. I want him to take this deal immediately and not spend another turn or two haggling and giving REM a chance to get out before we do. Whoever gets out of the war second has considerably less leverage, so we might as well do this now. Here's city counts:

Cities:
REM: 21
Dreylin: 20
Us: 18

We did queue up a settler for the spot we razed, so that'll bring us up to 19, and I'm hoping Sector 19 will get us to 20. There's a good chance REM will pick off one more Dreylin city, although that's less of a certainty if Dreylin takes peace with us. He has a lot of city defenders covering us off that he wouldn't need to bother with if he had peace with us.



* We pillaged the jungle road to prevent a land attack into Dolphins, and then plopped this Ironclad/Frigate here to prevent an Amphibious attack.

* I also lined up our Galleons (and other boats) on this tile 1SE of Dolphins to make it look like they're lining up to hit Geese. The Galleons are mostly empty, but Dreylin doesn't necessarily know that even if he may suspect it. I'm hoping it motivates him to take peace.

* Reinforced Penicillin, but I also plopped our Ironclad in front of it to make it difficult to amphibiously attack. That Galleon of Dreylin's looks like it may have been lined up to hit Penicillin.



A couple other notes:

* On turn roll, Dreylin generated an artist in his core. I'm guessing he wants that for another golden age.

* We no longer have REM's demos after turn roll. He's spending tons of EPs on us - he's clearly targeting city visibility. This is obnoxious.

[The Black Sword]

I think I remember chatting with Brick about his proposed ruleset for this game and debating whether airships ought to be banned for an Industrial start. I think my opinion landed on "probably, but let's just see what happens." I think my opinion has landed on yes for a hypothetical future Industrial game FWIW.

Curious on your reasoning here. And the obviously related question; do you think you should have researched Physics instead of something else?

[scooter]

I think I remember chatting with Brick about his proposed ruleset for this game and debating whether airships ought to be banned for an Industrial start. I think my opinion landed on "probably, but let's just see what happens." I think my opinion has landed on yes for a hypothetical future Industrial game FWIW.

Curious on your reasoning here. And the obviously related question; do you think you should have researched Physics instead of something else?

Yeah, if I did it over again, I'd probably prioritize it a little higher. My complaints about airships in no particular order:

* You can't really counter them except with airships of your own. If you're dying to counter them, the best you can do is beeline Railroad (a tech that nobody other than Pindicator currently has) and spam Machine Guns, but that takes you away from some very crucial early techs. By the time full-blown planes roll around, there's much stronger anti-air options available. Counter-less units are bad.

* The other thing is that the Kremlin is just downright too strong, and tacking on Airships is a nice, cheap way of enhancing that power. The penalty for Airships should be that you have to tech way out of the way of two powerful goodies (Combustion, Assembly Line) to get them, but if you're winning Kremlin anyway OR you grab the Physics scientist, well now it's a no-brainer. We didn't pursue either because we were very unlikely to win either race. Some of this could be balanced in a future game by simply doing a full snake pick (that way anyone wanting to use SPI or PHI to race for these goodies can), but there's obviously a limit.

* They completely shut down offense pre-Combustion. In a normal ancient game, your economy is very powerful at this stage, and it's not much of a slowdown. You have plenty of villages and towns, so the shelf life of airships is very short which is a more effective drawback to spamming them out. Sure, they shut down offense if you get enough of them, but only for a short time. Industrial start means they have a far longer shelf life due to the initial slower tech pace which gives them an inordinate amount of power.

Basically, I think airships have a couple fundamental issues with them, and Industrial era start exacerbates those issues. Do you disagree?