Ranamar and Lewwyn, ministers for Bismarck of Mali

[Ranamar]

This turn is a real slog. But I'm almost done with combat. To say it was a good turn for us would be an understatement. We now have more power than the total of the other three players.

Edit: I might not finish until this evening, have some obligations.

If you want to take a break, you can always leave one for the evening when we're "supposed to" play, and I can take a stab at it.

[SevenSpirits]

t150:

We are greeted by an offer of a 10 turn peace treaty with Yuris. We'd previously discussed it in chat, and it didn't look like he had done anything evil to us on his turn from what I could see, so I accepted. Then we get to see what happened:



OK, so (after airship attacks) Commodore suicided 2 marines and an infantry from boats against Dol Amroth. Then he landed the rest of his armies (except any other marines he still has).

(Before then we also lost a battleship to Luddite, possibly more. Unfortunately the log only goes 20 lines. (WHY??))

Here are the troops Commodore landed.

As expected he used the 4 galleons for DA and the other 2 for Rivendell. Also note that several of the units near Rivendell could have come along rails, so he could easily have up to 4 units in the galleons still. I'm guessing several Marines based on checking what he's been building each turn.

So: This is a significant problem. We don't want to start losing cities here, especially ones that he can then hold! Therefore I decided to do this before the attack vs Luddite, to see if I needed to recall any marines to help in defense.

First, I killed the two galleons near rivendell. The battleship he could see in the city but the destroyed came in from really far away - I upgraded it from an ironclad last turn - so I don't think he was expecting it. As one galleon was C1 and the other wasn't promoted I think he wanted to protect his marines in the weaker galleon from the battleship.

The units next to rivendell weren't really a threat. They're mostly cannons. So I concentrated on the stack on the hill by Dol Amroth. First the bomber and a couple fighters. Then, cannons. Remember how we built some random cannons a long time ago? This is why.

After a few attacks we got here:

Sadly, that one lost too. But that's a pretty good sign that it's cleanup time.

Our tank took out two units. I did a couple more attacks, saw that we'd easily dispatch our invaders, and decided to turn my attention to Egypt.

So we had 26 marines capably of attacking Mission this turn. Plus Battleships to zero defenses, 2 bombers, and 3 fighters. OK, ships, then planes, then...

A few marines later and we captured it. I then landed the Commando tank, currently named "Marine" from when he attacked last turn. "Marine" killed 5 workers on his way to Alpine. (Should have been 7, I wasn't sure how the moves would work.) Then I promoted to Morale to get a few more moves back. The odds went up less than I'd expected, but well, what can you do? Too late now, maybe I should have tested it out. Either way I renamed the tank "Hit Singles" as that's what its job was.



Turns out no, that was enough. And this way there were enough moves left to raze Green Flash as well.

Alpine had Kong Miao for 36gpt, Spiral Minaret, plus Wall Street and Mt. Rushmore. Green Flash just had another 12 citizens. That was a good tank.



OK, with the important Egyptian fighting done (and two boats of marines remaining) I decided to finish the Commodore combat to see where the marines should head. The Dol Amroth stack was easily wiped off the map (I switched to nationhood for the 3 extra infantry (and happy)). The stack by rivendell was harder because it was mostly cannons (immune to our own cannons) and we'd already used our planes. I still used a cannon on it (miraculously it survived at 4.1% odds) and then killed most of it, but a few units remain.

Then I remembered the bombers by Lorien which would make conquering Thebes a piece of cake. So I did that.

I lost one marine to combat, and deleted the winner. R.I.P.

At this point I decided we'd rather wail on Commodore a bit than Luddite, whose teching and production capabilities have sunk ridiculously low. So many ships headed east - towards the west. Freaking being on the international date line.

I did defend our newly captured Mission quite heavily, after counting all the units that could possibly attack it plus three draftees.

And I used two knights to prevent Luddite from being a threat towards the middle, capturing a worker and pillaging a fort + railroad.

Finally, I reinfored Rivendell quite heavily too. In fact I spent all our money upgrading some longbows to Infantry.

Here's why:

Yuris could gift a giant stack of cavalry to Commodore, who due to turn order would be able to attack Rivendell with them on the very same turn.

Our units:

Demos:

Cities (before ending turn this time, I finally remembered):

At the end of the turn, our power went up more than 300000, which is about half the total power Luddite has right now.

[Ranamar]

Very nice =)

You know, now that they're using airships, perhaps we should assign a fighter or two (probably one per area) to intercept duty. Just enough to discourage them from ever doing it again. We have enough planes to do that, right? I'd hate to see our own tactics used against us.

Edit:

Also, from the UN thread...

Now Commodore has declared war on us too (albeit in accordance with our agreements). When will you guys learn?

To be fair, what other choice do they have? If they hadn't declared on us, we would have declared on them one at a time.

Edit2: And I've actually been feeling remiss in my duties of having his name officially on the thread, and the save just came in, so I'm going to play it... or more likely, play half now and half this evening.

[Ranamar]

The story thus far...

Razed Iron Fist. I think I'm going to delete the marine that made the capture. Prior to that, I lost two marines softening up the defenders, who were all Infantry. I think that's pretty good...

We're going to have to move the bombers I used to soften it up, though, next turn, as they're not in range of any target cities anymore.

City's worthless to us, of course.

Heck, it doesn't even have trade routes!

Made one or two moves that I decided were weedy right afterward. I may have left a tank out to dry because I thought I'd have one more move afterward and I was being opportunistic about trying to kill units. I'm trying to decide if and how much I should throw good money after bad. I managed to forget what I was doing or something and used both bombers that could have hit one of commodore's cities this turn, one to move it to Dol Amroth (is more central... but still doesn't reach to the next blob) and the other to bomb the units I attacked with the tank.



That tank is really kind of out to dry, but we should be able to finish the stack off with the knight and two non CG-promoted infantry in Rivendell, if we want. That would at least provide some [strike]targets[/strike] [strike]meatshields[/strike] other units in a stack with the tank.

More turn to come this evening.

[SevenSpirits]

Oh btw, I forgot to post this in the report but I set up a galleon in Nurn that can hit Port (and potentially also Barachan Isle, in either order) after our workers finish the fort. Also you can't leave Rivendell any less defended (in fact might want to defend it more, depending) as yuris has in fact gifted those cavs.

Edit: Also I looked at the save and his artist is no longer visible. So it seems likely he'll try a bomb on our border vs Dol Amroth or Rivendell. I think only Rivendell has something to fear from that. But we can't leave DA poorly defended either - who knows what's all in the galleons now.

Also also he's put 5 of the cavs near Nurn, so make sure that has some defenders.

[Ranamar]

Oh btw, I forgot to post this in the report but I set up a galleon in Nurn that can hit Port (and potentially also Barachan Isle, in either order) after our workers finish the fort. Also you can't leave Rivendell any less defended (in fact might want to defend it more, depending) as yuris has in fact gifted those cavs.

Edit: Also I looked at the save and his artist is no longer visible. So it seems likely he'll try a bomb on our border vs Dol Amroth or Rivendell. I think only Rivendell has something to fear from that. But we can't leave DA poorly defended either - who knows what's all in the galleons now.

Also also he's put 5 of the cavs near Nurn, so make sure that has some defenders.

I noticed most of those things...
(Great Artist is news, though... hmm)

I was waffling on whether to put the fort on the ice or the hill. I think he can probably hit the workers with cav either way. Also, I airlifted one of the MGs from Numenor to Nurn, because I was trying to figure out how to get 5 defenders there and still ship 3 Marines out. I'll have to check Port's defenses again: We might not need all of them.

[SevenSpirits]

I noticed most of those things...
(Great Artist is news, though... hmm)

I was waffling on whether to put the fort on the ice or the hill. I think he can probably hit the workers with cav either way. Also, I airlifted one of the MGs from Numenor to Nurn, because I was trying to figure out how to get 5 defenders there and still ship 3 Marines out. I'll have to check Port's defenses again: We might not need all of them.

On the hill is 4/6 worker turns complete, we can finish it this turn. On the ice would take 3 turns I think.

Port just has 1 warrior but barachan isle has another 2. I think we have a 50%+ chance of capturing it with 2 marines - worth trying eh?

[Ranamar]

On the hill is 4/6 worker turns complete, we can finish it this turn. On the ice would take 3 turns I think.

Port just has 1 warrior but barachan isle has another 2. I think we have a 50%+ chance of capturing it with 2 marines - worth trying eh?

1) Doh; just saw "1 turn to complete" and figured I could do it on either tile this turn.

2) Yeah really... :D

[NobleHelium]

How many cities does everyone have right now?

[SevenSpirits]

Us: 23 (one's a size one replant, one's in anarchy for another 9 turns)
Commodore: 16 (will be 14-15 when we finish the turn)
Yuris: 12 (2 of them are size one replants)
Luddite: 7 (will be 5 when we finish the turn)