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No worries about the misclick. With as many units are on the board right now, it's nearly impossible to get through a full turn without a mistake.
I agree with your thoughts on Galleon placement, and I also agree we might as well be in place to take those pindicator cities in case the opportunity arises.
The only reason I hadn't placed any airships in the fort yet was because we would have to defend them with a couple land units to prevent an amphibious attack from killing them all. I think we can do that more easily this turn since the north is no longer threatened.
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Hmm, do enemy units kill airships based on a fort tile if they move into that tile? I admit that I've never run across that issue before, since the AI doesn't build forts or station planes on them. If we need to guard against landing on the fort tile, then no, it's not worth splitting off more units for that purpose. Better to put the airships in cities in that case.
I think we'll have some of the smaller/newer cities keep producing airships for a little while. They return their usefulness for a very long time, as recon missions can't be intercepted by fighters or later air units. The cap of 4 per tile is pretty much their only limitation. You can never really have too many airships.
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(July 13th, 2016, 12:33)Sullla Wrote: Hmm, do enemy units kill airships based on a fort tile if they move into that tile? I admit that I've never run across that issue before, since the AI doesn't build forts or station planes on them. If we need to guard against landing on the fort tile, then no, it's not worth splitting off more units for that purpose. Better to put the airships in cities in that case.
I think we'll have some of the smaller/newer cities keep producing airships for a little while. They return their usefulness for a very long time, as recon missions can't be intercepted by fighters or later air units. The cap of 4 per tile is pretty much their only limitation. You can never really have too many airships.
Unless a lurker can clarify the mechanics before I do, I'll test the fort/airship thing before playing the turn. I'm assuming it behaves the way boats do - if an enemy moves a unit onto a fort held only by naval units, the naval units are killed automatically (I'm like 80% sure this is right). I would guess the airships do the same, but I don't actually know for sure.
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I just tested this in WB, and you're right with both Scooter. If an enemy unit attacks onto a fort held by naval units or ariships all the remaining units are lost.
July 13th, 2016, 16:06
(This post was last modified: July 13th, 2016, 19:41 by Nekira Sudacne.)
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I just sandboxed it as well. if a Fort is taken, all air and naval ships are automatically lost on the fort Tile.
I also Sandboxed to test the "Building more than four airships" in a city to confirm--yes, if a city already has more than 4 airships (or any air unit) and builds another one, the new one pops out automatically at the nearest city instead of the one that built it. However, this does not waste the units turn, as the rebase is free--it's built, in the nearest city, but still able to move or take a mission/rebase again. (Unless of course you have an Airport built to expand the unit limit--but same logic applies at the new limit).
This is actually kind of interesting: after all, this "free rebase" could go quite a ways if you have a high production city on another landmass, for example.
I did amusingly confirm you can kind of bypass these limits using Carriers--since any number of carriers can exist on the same tile, you can theoretically stack infinity fighters in a city so long as you build a new carrier per 3 fighters and load them as you go. Not that this is very helpful with airships
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Thanks guys for the confirmation. One less thing for me to worry about.
Turn 337
This was a slightly stressful turn. I have no real clue how REM will react, but here's what we ended up with.
I mostly agonized over what units to defend Photography and Pindicator's city with, but with these units on this tile we're at least guaranteeing that if REM goes for either city, any boat he brings will be sunk guaranteed. So that feels nice anyway.
Our great fear here is that he'll say "okay fine" and simply go north with these boats. I pulled a couple units from the north onto Textile, but I did set up a boat or two to be able to ferry units back if he does swing north. I'm pretty sure we would be able to cover it, and it would just result in valuable time being wasted before Dreylin presumably joins the war. It would also put his crucial sz13 city there (former pindicator) at risk of being boated by us which I don't think he would do. I guess we'll find out.
I agonized over these particular two spots for forever partially because I initially thought Dreylin's Galleons had Navigation (they don't) meaning they could hit Photo (they can't), which would have made things considerably more difficult. I wouldn't be shocked if those Galleons are empty, but I wasn't ready to bet the city on it.
Anyway, Photography is very safe with 8 units in it (the maximum he could hit it with). I should have transported 1 more into Kabulevsky. Kabulevsky is less bulletproof, but it's still very unlikely he can take it (he'd still have to win 8/8 battles). If he somehow does, he would have to 1) have a bunch of Marines and 2) bring Destroyers up to bombard. That would result in us easily wiping out the land units while also wiping the entire naval stack with ease, so I don't see him doing that either. I think both are safe.
The northern Galleons weren't able to get to the ideal fork tile (marked with a sign), and I had to do some other shuffling, so the short of it is just 1 Galleon is capable of hitting that pindicator city next turn. That said, I think that'll be fine. All 3 Infantry on board are of the 9xp (Amphibious) variety, so if he keeps his usual 1 unit in there, it should be an easy win should it come to that. More likely we wait another turn or two.
The other two boats have 8 quality units on board that can hit a very wide range of tiles via Kabalevsky. I slightly misplayed here (that boat with the 2 9xp should have been on the fork tile), but it's not too bad. If REM backs off with his boats, we've got around 15 units (4 cannons, 11 hitters) that can join pindicator's megastack in Borodin. Plus some airships (rebased two more into the city). That's not counting anything in Photography. I think we can make it very, very painful for REM to advance. In fact I'd be slightly surprised if he moves on Borodin at this point.
This terrified me for a moment until I realized this tile lines up with these Galleons moving out of the city I think they were stationed in. Still, it underscores that if he drops off 9 units on that island, we're at GG. I sure hope Dreylin isn't getting bored of this game because ending it would be very easy for him.
The Galleons may be headed to that pindicator city. If they seem to be, that may accelerate our timeline. Slightly more likely they're cutting through Dreylin's city + fort at Pigeons headed towards REM's totally undefended island.
Demos and power graphs spoilered:
I think we've done a pretty good job of scrambling Destroyers (and Airships) while 1) teching and 2) not buying any via upgrades. The drastic scrambling of them both may have saved our game, or at the very least extended it a bit longer.
One final bit of news - this was disappointing. I sure hope Xenu didn't login and simply accept this unknowingly. Anyway, it's very good news for REM obviously. It didn't seem to be a hot war at all, but the threat of combat is bad for him, not to mention the fact that he's got so few trading partners (and so much WW) that he's got to be struggling a bit.
This was the scariest enter key press yet. REM is very good at this. If there's a hole, he will find it. Just need to keep hoping he doesn't.
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I saw scooter's post this morning before I headed out for the day, with the news about BGN (or Xenu his current substitute) signing peace with REM. That's very bad news for us, as it will very likely free up a good number of REM units for military action elsewhere. It also makes this much less of a coalition to stop REM, and much more of our team and the shattered remnants of pindicator against REM... which is pretty much our team against REM. I'm wondering what BGN/Xenu were thinking by signing peace here. They probably never wanted to enter this war in the first place. Does BGN hope to turtle with his current empire, maintain enough military to be too thorny to attack, and try to tech into space (?) I don't know what the logic might be, but this was definitely a major setback for us.
Now when you're traveling, especially traveling alone, you often end up with a lot of downtime going from place to place, time to think things over from different angles. Today I was thinking about our position in this game, and how BGN's signing of peace changes the diplomatic structure of this game. And I'm increasingly thinking that it might be time for us to get out of this war too, assuming REM would accept a treaty (which I think he would). So what was our initial goal in the first place from remaining at war?
Stop REM from conquering pindicator. Well, we've defended ourselves very admirably but we haven't really managed this. The good news is that REM has been forced to raze rather than capture a lot of the pindicator cities that he's taken. (I saw on CivStats that REM razed rather than capturing pindicator's capital this turn, which was a surprise to me. Thought he would make the attempt to hold that very tasty prize.) I think that REM has gained about 5-6 cities to date from this war. That's the good news.
The bad news is that pindicator is just about gone. He has 4 cities remaining with his capital gone up in smoke. Pindicator is not even bothering to defend 2 other cities; he's holding up in those last two inland cities and daring REM to come attack. In fact, we're protecting one of those cities from falling to REM! In other words, the goal of stopping pindicator from being conquered hasn't really succeeded. And now we're about to be left to face REM all on our own to achieve... what exactly?
With BGN cashing out of this war, I think there's a very good case for us to do the same. Here's what we could potentially gain:
* At least two cities, and possibly more. Rather than protecting pindicator cities, we could grab the two that are undefended. I worry that this opportunity won't be around for much longer if we aren't willing to act soon. That gets us two more cities (up from 21 to 23 total) and we might be able to capture something else or plant a settler or two in the culturally freed up ground.
* Peace gets us out of a destructive war with REM. We've been holding out pretty well thus far against a technologically and numerically superior opponent, but that's largely because REM was fighting two other teams. REM is very good at this game, and he's not going to make tactical mistakes to allow us to fight our way out of this. Sooner or later, he's going to come and make us pay - that military stat in the Demographics is not encouraging. Furthermore, REM has every incentive to fight us 1 vs 1, since he is the #1 team and we are the #2 team. That's a war we lose, and a war he wins, tactically and strategically. We want to avoid this.
* Peace allows us to move some of our forces back to the Dreylin front(s). We have been taking a crazy risk by pulling so many units over to deal with REM. Scooter and I have both been very uncomfortable leaving so many cities underdefended near Dreylin. Yes, we're relying on metagaming concerns to leave us safe, but that only goes so far. What if Dreylin decided to declare war, grab 2-3 weakly held cities, and then sue for peace? Doesn't that help him out substantially without throwing the game to REM? I worry about this all the time - we've really been pushing our luck.
* Finally, we have no guarantee that Dreylin is going to enter this war against REM. I mean, we've been hoping so, but there's no proof that Dreylin will do so. What if Dreylin just sits back and keeps teching while REM fights it out with our team? That's a pretty darn good scenario for Dreylin, right? What if he decides to take a swing at us like I said in the last paragraph, and we get stuck 1 vs 2 against both of them? Dreylin might be willing to calculate that he can get enough territory from us to improve his chances of winning without throwing the game to REM entirely. These are unpleasant scenarios to ponder.
Anyway, the logic was that we'd join a coalition war to stop REM from conquering pindicator. But the coalition seems to be falling apart now, and pindicator has mostly died anyway. I think grabbing the spoils we can get from pindicator's land is looking more and more like the best of a set of bad options here. If REM comes out of this with 30 cities and we have 23-24 cities, that's not very good for us, but at least we're still in the game and have a chance, right? Fighting on 1 vs 1 against REM while Dreylin techs is a lot worse than that.
We do still have a few advantages going forward:
* Panzers: tanks are going to be the go-to offensive unit for a long time, and we get panzers, the German unique unit that has +50% against other tanks. That will help a lot in any kind of future military engagement.
* Promotions: we'll always be Aggressive with the free Combat I promotions, and we'll always have the Pentagon for 2 extra XP on all units. We also still have the potential for a Commando factory if we can land two more Great Generals (and we're halfway to the next one). This always gives us a chance, in my opinion; a Commando raid on an enemy spaceship could swing things in the ultra lategame.
* Golden Age: we still have the potential for a two GPP Golden Age. Dreylin and REM and BGN have all gotten their two GPP Golden Ages. Given how many Great People we've all been burning on lightbulbs, the lack of more Great People for free on the tech tree, and the lack of National Epic availability, no one is probably going to get the three GPP Golden Age. (I hope not!) So we have one more Golden Age we can line up, and that will really help out.
Those advantages aren't the greatest. REM's Organized + Statue of Liberty is a lot stronger, and I don't think our odds of winning will be that great. Still, we have at least a chance, right? I don't think right now is the best time to live or die in warfare, not when our opponent has tanks and battleships and we do not. If we could get Industrialism (tanks/battleships) and Flight (fighters) and Radio (bombers), we would be at effective military parity for quite some time. You need to reach up to mechs and modern armor to decisively get ahead again, units which require most of the Modern Age techs to unlock. So again, if we need to challenge REM to a war, better to do it when we're fielding the same units, not when he's got tanks/battleships and we do not.
Finally, if we could get peace with REM, we could also look into vulturing cities from whatever is left of pindicator and even Donovan. I don't think either of them will be able to stop panzers once they roll off the assembly lines. Barring that, we're getting closer to the end of the tech tree, so holding tight and teching with an eye on the space race is another possibility. Peace would also let us get the Iron Works and West Point into play, finally, which would help a lot.
So my recommendation is to wait and see what REM does on his turn, then think very seriously about signing peace and taking it to what's left of pindicator. It's not ideal, but it might be our best option. Thoughts?
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I've been thinking about this a bit too. I agree that he's not going to make a huge mistake, and really that's all we can hope for from this conflict. He's got the numbers and the tech to keep us at arm's length while preventing us from doing any damage to him. That said, there's a few things I can't quite get past.
1) We're going to have to fight REM eventually. He's ahead of us, and if we sign peace, he'll be able to pad that lead further by growing his city advantage. Will Panzers and maybe commandos be enough to overcome that? Maybe? I really don't know. This is new ground for me.
2) If we peace with him and try to take those two nearby pindicator cities, we open up to the very real possiblity of pindicator using that big army on us instead. That would be pretty disastrous. We can't afford to lose a big stack quite like REM can. Pindicator's army isn't amazingly big or anything, but it's very heavily concentrated, and it's big, modern, and promoted enough to do some serious damage.
3) I still think it's in Dreylin's interests to join rather than hope we'll stay at war with REM 1v1. The latter doesn't seem realistic as evidenced by the fact that we're considering backing out. I have to think he knows that? I would hate to bail a turn or two before his peace expires, especially when we see him possibly moving Galleons in a position to threaten REM.
Here's a simpler way of stating what I'm thinking. If Dreylin is planning on joining, leaving right now would be a mistake. If Dreylin is planning to sit on the sidelines, staying in is a mistake. Do you agree with that much or no?
July 14th, 2016, 14:03
(This post was last modified: July 14th, 2016, 14:08 by antisocialmunky.)
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Quote:Finally, if we could get peace with REM, we could also look into vulturing cities from whatever is left of pindicator and even Donovan. I don't think either of them will be able to stop panzers once they roll off the assembly lines. Barring that, we're getting closer to the end of the tech tree, so holding tight and teching with an eye on the space race is another possibility. Peace would also let us get the Iron Works and West Point into play, finally, which would help a lot.
Not to be a downer but realistically there's not a whole lot left of either one of those teams and REM and Dreylin will be the only ones having to stop those Panzers. That seems to be a less cut and dry matchup unless you got that commando factory working already (getting enough GG's to pull that off and trolling everyone should be the main objective if you give up on winning).
@Scooter - Your analysis is essentially correct but what happens if Dreylin sees you sign peace - What is his best option to invade if he wants to grab more land? BGN, You, or REM?
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(July 14th, 2016, 14:03)antisocialmunky Wrote: (getting enough GG's to pull that off and trolling everyone should be the main objective if you give up on winning).
Minor note on this - we do need a plan to actually get those GG points. We're about 20 shy of the first general needed, and then we'll need one more, and we're golden. That's going to necessitate a big fight happening somewhere. This is part of why I was hoping there'd be some sort of REM showdown soon because it would get us a lot closer. Short of that, it's going to be awhile before we have it in place.
Losing out on the Fascism general really stings.
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