[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[Sullla]

By the way, just so I don't sound contradictory here, a quick point I'd clarification:

* I suggested we might want to sign peace with REM and attack pindicator. The key here being peace with REM -> war with pindicator.

* Scooter suggested we stay at war with REM for 2 more turns and wait to see what Dreylin does. This was a good plan.

* Given that we are at war with REM, we should not attack pindicator. Putting ourselves on the wrong end of a 2 vs 1 seems very unwise to me. Hope that makes sense.

[scooter]

Characterizing it as a 2v1 war is a little disingenuous though. Obviously there's risks all over, but I'm having a lot of trouble seeing any way to improve our position. REM is producing units faster than us, and if we keep pace, he techs faster than us. We're going to see fighters and bombers from him any turn now, at which point it won't matter that much if we have battleships and panzers. If we make peace with REM, he'll simply advance on pindicator and capture his cities before we can with no fear of attack from us, and we'll be in an even worse place. Dreylin isn't even enough at this point - I think REM's power is as much as both of us combined or close to it. I take from Dreylin's recent diplo message he might not even join in a couple turns unless he can obviously make progress in the area east of Zipper.

Anyway, this is what I'm struggling with. I'm becoming gradually more convinced that we aren't going to get anywhere by continuing to follow this path, so high-risk high-reward play makes sense.

Stepping back, let's say on T340 Dreylin declares and advances on the two former Gaspar cities that REM controls. What does that change for us? I don't see a move we could make to capitalize on that. And I also don't think Dreylin even has enough units in the area to pull that off, so he may not even try.

[Sullla]

I'll play devil's advocate then: if we're using our units to attack pindicator, how do we stop REM from invading us? He has every incentive to do so. And if pindicator attacks us with his main stack, we will take heavy losses... followed by REM tearing right through us.

I just don’t think we can make an offensive move without Dreylin in the war. I don't know how to stop REM either, but I see attacking pindicator while already being at war with REM as suicide.

[Elkad]

If you could capture/raze rubenstein in a single turn it would be worth the units spent just to catch that fleet in the harbor and burn it all. 9 destroyers, 4 troop carriers, and 4 airships would just disappear.

But I don't see how you would coordinate it either. The only option would be to login at the same time as Pind and let him see you hitting the city with destroyers, then moving your land units up to the edge of the rails and hoping he guesses the plan, like the plan, has enough workers free to build all those rails, and commits to it. He likely doesn't even know what is loaded on your ships, so he may not be able to see a path to winning the fight at all.

Getting that all to come together (including all the worker turns to get the rails in) with no planning at all seems like lotto-winning odds. It's a great opportunity that you can't exploit.

[scooter]

I'll play devil's advocate then: if we're using our units to attack pindicator, how do we stop REM from invading us? He has every incentive to do so. And if pindicator attacks us with his main stack, we will take heavy losses... followed by REM tearing right through us.

I just don’t think we can make an offensive move without Dreylin in the war. I don't know how to stop REM either, but I see attacking pindicator while already being at war with REM as suicide.

You're very likely right, but I'm struggling to see the alternative other than concession. Other than simply maintaining this slight disadvantage and small skirmishes for awhile longer, and then sending the house at him while he builds a spaceship and hope we break through.

Anyway, I'll play this tonight, and I'm not going to declare on pindicator. I'll ensure we have the option again next turn, but past that I'll keep up our tentative distance with REM.

[Sullla]

Sirian used to write that where there is life, there's hope. I agree that things don't look good now, but hey, there's still plenty of time left in this game. Who knows what might happen if we get lucky? The Demos aren't THAT bad.

And remember, we can always plunge the knife into pindicator in a turn or two if the situation looks better for it.

[scooter]

Turn 338

Sanity prevailed? Sullla is probably right here. Our chances aren't great regardless, but REM did make a mistake last turn that pindicator punished. Let's try to make it possible for him to make a bigger mistake at least. It's not likely, but we can hope. It is worth noting that his SoL city is pretty close to these frontlines (directly east of Fergus in the below screenshot). We can't threaten it anytime soon, but it may make a nice hail-mary type target further down the road.



I shifted the bulk of our navy into Photography. REM can't hit the city next turn, and from here REM will be unable to advance onto the ocean without presenting himself as a target. Now, he might still do it after a turn of healing joins him with fresh battleships, but at the very least he'll have to think twice. All the loaded units are capable of hitting any number of spots on the mainland.



I've setup a Galleon chain line here in case we need to emergency shuffle up to 5 units into Antiseptic or Zipper. The Transport highlighted can sail into either one. The selected Galleon can get to that tile with 3 units that can swap in (plus up to 2 more from Textile itself), and any number of the Galleons in Photography can be the suppliers.

This is really only necessary due to our rails here since getting from Photography to the Transport is 11 tiles rather than 10. So we could make this unnecessary by railing the tile 1SE of Jenny. Might be worthwhile.



Just in case.



I added a couple units to our border here including the fresh Infantry from Haber. Those tanks in particular need to be watched.



I've seen worse.

[Sullla]

Looks good scooter. While I agree that our odds of actually winning the game (as opposed to being a contender) aren't the greatest, those Demographics at least have us within shouting distance. And Dreylin + BGN are both in a Golden Age right now, so we're doing better in comparison than it seems. Dreylin's teching is going to plunge once he comes out of Golden Age and has to start building units again, which he'll have to do pretty soon.

I'll go ahead and railroad the tile SE of Spinning Jenny shortly. We're mostly done with worker labor on Textile Island, just finishing up with the last few projects. Also worth noting that I'm pretty sure you can build railroads in enemy territory if you have Open Borders with them, so we may be able to toss down some rails in Donovan territory and hit units over there if REM moves them forward. (Of course, he can do the same to us, and once the rails are laid in place, we won't be able to remove them, so something we'll have to consider. But the possibility is there.)

Honestly, right now we're mostly just waiting to see what, if anything, Dreylin does about REM. If the answer is "nothing", then we all might as well concede now. I hope that resource trade we got back from Dreylin means something...

[scooter]

Looks good scooter. While I agree that our odds of actually winning the game (as opposed to being a contender) aren't the greatest, those Demographics at least have us within shouting distance. And Dreylin + BGN are both in a Golden Age right now, so we're doing better in comparison than it seems. Dreylin's teching is going to plunge once he comes out of Golden Age and has to start building units again, which he'll have to do pretty soon.

...

Honestly, right now we're mostly just waiting to see what, if anything, Dreylin does about REM. If the answer is "nothing", then we all might as well concede now. I hope that resource trade we got back from Dreylin means something...

I've been thinking about this a little more. I wonder if we're thinking the wrong way here a little bit. REM is still teching, but it does seem like his tech pace has slowed pretty dramatically. I think he's legitimately being hurt by 1) total lack of trade routes, 2) massive military maintenance, and 3) some war weariness. His tech ceiling is certainly much higher than ours, but the demos lately have seemed to suggest that our tech rate is actually a little better than his, not to mention that we get to draft off his known tech bonus. Of course we're subsidizing with wealth, but the point is more that we can afford to do that and still survive. It's hard for us to attack REM right now, but it's pretty difficult for him to do the same to us - he just recently tried to invade and was forced to retreat despite having a military 2x our size AND a small tech edge. Panzers will make it even more difficult for him to attack us. He seems to be building units at a much faster rate, and yet he's still failing to advance.

The trade routes and military maintenace difference is probably costing him a couple hundred commerce/turn against us. Sure, it would be nice if Dreylin captures a couple of their border cities, but an equally valuable outcome may actually be that Dreylin declares and stays at war even if there's a stalemate. REM is probably having some difficulty with war weariness, and Dreylin declaring may add a little bit more if it hasn't decayed yet.

If this happens (Dreylin declaring war and staying in it), REM likely won't run away with the tech race - we can at least keep him within 1-2 techs of us. That's before we mess with our golden age. I'm going to take a look at this tonight, but our upcoming 2-person GA is obviously valuable, and if we can use the GA great person boost (+ Pacifism) to generate a scientist or two during the golden age, we can make up some of our beaker gap with some timely bulbs. Generating two scientists would be worth 3k beakers which is a little less than half the gap to REM. A Merchant could be equally valuable with a trade mission to Dreylin, although that obviously carries with it some risks (less so with rails and 6-move Galleons).

We would still be in second place, but the combination of the two might put us in striking distance if/when REM starts to build the spaceship. So maybe there's something to be said for the status quo? The only advantage we have over REM is that he has to defend every single angle of attack against him, and we don't. We can maintain status quo with a far lighter investment in military, allowing us to wait until he slows down to turn on the all-military jets. Part of our issue right now is if we went 100% military, it would be outdated by the time it hit REM. That should settle down in the later portions of the game since it's not like everyone's got maturing towns coming online to speed up the pace further. I think the late space techs will take a very long time for him to complete, and that's a lot of time we would get to spend at equal military tech with him.

So the short version: we might not be totally screwed if Dreylin doesn't advance much so long as he does actually declare. Any thoughts?

[scooter]

One final note: REM does have access to Paratroopers now. That means tonight I'm going to figure out, well, how they work . A few of our inland core cities are undefended, and I need to figure out if I need to stick token defenders in them.