RBPB4 [SPOILERS] - De Gaulle of the Egyptians

[kalin]

My point was, why would anybody think they need a NAP with somebody who has no military?

Because they had no military either? Or maybe they were engaged elsewhere?

I agree with everything LP said above. The purpose of a NAP is to not have to build an army if you want to focus on economy or to attack someone else while having a flank secure. All the people involved in the NAP get this benefit. I also consider NAPs very binding. If you break one I would be wary dealing with you, if you break more then I would consider I am in a cold war the moment I meet you.

Kalin

[Lord Parkin]

In addition to my comments in the tech thread, I've been fortunate enough to experience 0 losses this turn from dozens of battles. Reloading not only wastes 4+ hours of heavily invested time, but it's automatically a losing proposition because I can only do worse than I've already done. It's really not an option to replay the turn in my mind.

[Ellimist]

In addition to my comments in the tech thread, I've been fortunate enough to experience 0 losses this turn from dozens of battles. Reloading not only wastes 4+ hours of heavily invested time, but it's automatically a losing proposition because I can only do worse than I've already done. It's really not an option to replay the turn in my mind.

Aren't the RNG results preserved on reloads anyway?

[Lord Parkin]

Aren't the RNG results preserved on reloads anyway?

Not in a simultaneous turns game, and even if it was I couldn't possibly replay the exact sequence of events the same way (order of battles, promotions, etc). Anyway, the larger issue is the time investment.

[Lord Parkin]

Further, Sunrise has just said to me that he believes it was only 3 Rifles that got booted. I would really appreciate if Plako can live with that and doesn't make a fuss, because frankly reloading all this for the sake of 3 units which only lost 1 move each seems ridiculous from my end.

[Lord Parkin]

Just finished drafting our 100th Rifle this turn. Now, time to put them to some good use...

[Lord Parkin]

I won't mention this in the public thread, but part of the reason this game is still far from over is because I'm still considerably outnumbered in terms of units, and my production base is of course limited. The 4-5 others that are fighting against me have a baseline that can produce (and draft) far more units than I can per turn, so as time goes on their unit lead over me is only going to get more pronounced.

Plako already has far too many units for me to safely invade right now, and Locke and Luddite are rapidly approaching that level. Nakor will be getting there too once he makes it to Rifling and starts drafting. Simply put, though my army is impressive, I can't be everywhere at once, so a numbers advantage against me is still a very potent threat. That's why this game is nowhere close to over yet, IMHO.

[novice]

How do you plan to overcome your numerical disadvantage?

[Lord Parkin]

With technology. Not to state the obvious, but the great thing about having a tech lead is that a prolonged stalemate is always in your favour. All I really have to do is make sure the war stays a stalemate until Bombers, and then it's really game over. The battle this turn will be nothing compared to that.

Plus, Tanks and Battleships will help once other nations start getting to Destroyers and Infantry. That's still a little while away though.

[Lord Parkin]

Well, the surprise has surely been spoiled somewhat by now, but here's the turn report anyway.

So I opened up T200 to find... this.



Yikes, look just how many ships there are on that tile. Pretty damned intimidating. Man, if only we'd prepared for a situation like this.

Oh wait, that's right... we did.



(That's last turn's pic, to prove everything was in place on time and there was no double moving.)

We'd mostly been building/whipping Drydocks-sped Transports - because against wooden ships they're just as effective as Destroyers, but cost almost half as much so twice as many can be built in the same period. Not to mention the bonus of being able to put stuff in them. Plus we had a bunch of Galleons around from earlier, which cost us just over a turn's worth of 0% gold to upgrade to Transports.

So yeah, the odds were somewhat in our favour. First the Transports cleaned out the Frigates...



Then the Frigates cleaned out the Galleons...



And after that, there wasn't really much left. "So long, and thanks for all the XP."

I could bore you with all the micromanagement of shifting loaded troops from ship to ship during the battle to ensure that even if we got an unlucky combat result, there was never any danger of losing a single land unit. Or promoting 6 XP ships immediately after battles bringing them to 8 XP, which allowed them 3 promotions (Charismatic) and healing to a minimum of 87/100 health. Or promoting a couple of ships to navigation after they'd finished moving so they got 1-2 extra moves. But I'll skip that and move on to the more interesting stuff.

Next there was the bizarre matter of Crossing II. Nakor left that city with two - presumably fully loaded - Galleons inside, and only 1 Axeman defending. I'm really not sure what he was thinking. One of his most powerful cities - Moai, no less - and he just leaves it wide open for us? Only thing I can guess is that he didn't realise units inside ships don't defend cities. (They don't, for anyone wondering.)

So yeah, we sent a Rifle in...



...and one somewhat lucky battle later...



(Aside: man, that's a substantial amount of gold. If we can manage to conquer 1-2 cities per turn, we might keep up 100% research for quite a while yet. )

I was actually tossing up whether or not to raze the city. I eventually decided to keep it, because I was reasonably confident I could hold on to it for at least a while... plus it had useful buildings and lots of pop. Ten turns of resistance was fairly harsh, though - and I also unintentionally caused a little unhappiness in one city which lost the Representation happiness. Ah well, easily fixed next turn.

I barricaded the three tiles in front of the city with ships, since Plako has two Galleons in Aka and Nakor might have more out of sight. That way any attackers can't invade directly into the city, but will have to land first and give us a chance to counterattack.

Here's the city screen of our captured city, with an appropriate new name:



Finally, it was time to finish tying up the loose ends around the remaining 6 Galleons of Nakor's naval stack. I was slightly short of being able to take out the whole thing, so in a flash of inspiration I decided to encircle his ships with a 3-4 thick wall of my own ships, just to make sure they couldn't escape and cause any mischief.



Now that's what I call running rings around someone.

Nakor now has a choice... he can choose to destroy his remaining ships himself, or we can do it for him next turn. I'm okay with either eventuality. Obviously it sucks a bit for him, though.

It's worth noting that if Nakor had placed his stack on the coast rather than 1 tile off, then not only would he have got an extra 10% strength for all battles (which might have resulted in 1-2 casualties for me), but he would have been able to unload the troops that survived rather than having them imprisoned in this way. I have no idea what his logic was in placing his stack where he did, but I thought it was worth pointing out that it wasn't optimal. Perhaps he thought we had a vastly smaller navy and that he wasn't in any real danger, I don't know.

So the final result was 20 dead Galleons (10 Plako's, 10 Nakor's) and 16 dead Frigates (3 Plako's, 13 Nakor's). In total, assuming all Galleons were loaded, our kill:loss ratio this turn was 96:0. That's not counting the six imprisoned Galleons which will certainly die at Nakor's hand or ours this turn or next. That's an additional 24 doomed units, bringing the total to 120 units taken out of action with 0 losses. Not too shabby.

Here are the demographics after my turn was played, for anyone interested. Note that Plako's power ("Rival Best") went down by about 250,000 soldiers compared to this time last turn, despite him almost certainly having produced more in-between turns. Nakor's soldier count will have gone down by even more.



For those of you who speak Emoticonfederate, here's the TL;DR summary of Plako and Nakor's attack:

>:-]

:-o

:'-(