Gandhi of France: The Non-Violent Warrior

[kjn]

Too bad you can't check the Last Days option!

[oledavy]

Alrighty lurkers, the long wait is over. I have a final count for the forces going into Operation ARMAGEDDON. They key unit counts are bolded:

The Totals Are:

41 Rifles
29 Musketeers
10 Muskets
44 Cannon
5 Catapults
22 Machine Guns
9 Knights
1 Horse Archer
2 Maces
2 Praetorians
5 Pikes*
7 Longbows
1 Supermedic Explorer

[SIZE="1"]*We may be able to get up to five more into the stack depending on whether or not Shoot can spare any of the ones serving as MPs in Orlando. [/SIZE]

[SIZE="3"]178 Units Total [/SIZE]

Break-down by type:

49 Collateral Hitters
22 Machine Guns
106 Hitters

I would feel more comfortable if we had a few more cannons and machine guns, but at this point, there's not much we can do. This is the price we pay for having to go in a couple turns earlier. At any rate, I estimate Lewwyn will be fielding a similar number of soldiers. We'll see who comes out on top.

We hit Beijing on Turn 190.

[thestick]

Why do pikes have an asterisk?

[oledavy]

Why do pikes have an asterisk?

For a footnote I forgot to put in, fixed now.

[Shoot the Moon]

[SIZE="1"]*We may be able to get up to five more into the stack depending on whether or not Shoot can spare any of the ones serving as MPs in Orlando. [/SIZE]

I can't spare any without the city going into unhappiness. And seeing as Team 2 has literally no mounted units, I don't particularly see including the five as being worth it unless you guys very strongly think I should.

[Shoot the Moon]

Also, does your turn 190 estimate take account of this?



Yeah, they tiles flipped one turn before we were going to move in

For the lurkers sake, last turn Macao had 12 Muskets, 2 Jans, 11 CKNs, and 13 cats in it (and some other random stuff that doesn't matter). I've seen at least 4 other CKNs since then. The CKNs are really the only thing I'm terribly worried about, but I honestly am not happy that they have roughly as many of those as I do MGs. Not good. Then again, also nothing we can do except go in now.

[oledavy]

The tile flipping was taken into accout, I also included the sentry knight and longbow in Lewwyn's territory in the assessment of our forces.

If you have a chance, could you clean up some of the signs in that area. I figure we're going to be taking a lot of screenshots of it during the next few turns and it would be nice if we could get uncluttered pictures. Also, do you have a shot of the stack in Macau?

[oledavy]

Shoot and WK are still AWOL, so it will be a little longer before we can kick off Armageddon.

I'll have a t183-t185 Summary for France up sometime in the next 24 hours, but in the meantime, I wanted to show you guys something that has intrigued me:



This is the MFG graph after t184. You can clearly see Speaker and Sulla getting Factories and Coal Plants online. I expect we'll see start seeing Sunrise spiking soon as well. However, here's the real surprise:



Look at my standing in Mfg! Sulla only has 43 hammers on me, producing 109% of my production capacity. Now, granted, I expect Sulla is still in the process of railroading mines and building Coal Plants in his outlying cities. However, I'm still throwing up workshops. and railroading mines too. Additionally, I haven't erected my IW yet, which is a huge boost in and of itself. Bottomline: I'm staying hammer competitive with Sulla without a single factory or coal plant, and I didn't have to build any infrastructure to do it.

This doesn't even take into account Kremlin-powered whips. When we build the CR, and I can start slipping into Slavery for 1t to whip and remain in CS the rest of the time.......

Now, I don't expect this solution to work long-term, and this certainly doesn't mean that we'll be skipping factories and power plants altogether The point is that - while it is still a little early to make the call - our stop gap economic plan appears to be working

[waterbat]

super impressive Davy. Super doesn't even describe it.

Knowing that you guys were behind on the Assembly tech path and knowing you needed to whip up some serious army to march into China -- the way you put together this plan was amazing. Thanks for keeping us clued into that process. Now ---- go do what you have to do so we can then see how this economic battle works out.

[oledavy]

super impressive Davy. Super doesn't even describe it.

Knowing that you guys were behind on the Assembly tech path and knowing you needed to whip up some serious army to march into China -- the way you put together this plan was amazing. Thanks for keeping us clued into that process. Now ---- go do what you have to do so we can then see how this economic battle works out.

It's been a team effort, couldn't do this without StM and WK, but thank you

Without further ado,

[SIZE="4"]Turns 183-185[/SIZE]

Most of the action of the last few turns has taken place in the Eastern Sea, where Sulla completely destroyed my fleet on t184 and regained naval control of his coastline. We've now come full circle and he's back to blockading my coast. So, here are the events turn by turn:

Turn 182 - Recap

After the epic battle of Sandstorm Bay (curse the RNG! ) The naval strengths in the eastern sea stood at the following:

Me:
5 Frigates
2 Ironclads

Sulla:
2 Frigates
2 Ironclads

After I withdrew my two combat III frigates for future upgrading, I was left with five warships to play with, and found myself on the horns of a dilemma. With combustion online the following turn, I was unsure what to do with these ships, I could:

A. Retreat and keep my navy intact.
B. Sacrifice them and get another turn or two of interdicting Sulla.

As much I would have liked to upgrade all my existing ships and maintain my control over the seas, we just didn't have the gold to spare to do so (though apparently, Team #1 did). It is a horrendously expensive upgrade from frigate/ironclad to destroyer as well. So, upgrading was effectively ruled out. I could retreat and keep them alive, but this would just mean they continue to cost me GPT without contributing anything. All they would be is bodies in a stack to absorb hits, and neither frigates nor my Nav I ironclads even have the speed to keep up with the destroyers in the first place. So, in the end, I opted to throw them away, getting in another turn of blockades.

Now that it has passed, if any lurkers have thoughts on how to handle the combustion changeover, I would love to hear what someone else has to say. Whenever I'm faced with this dilemma, neither choice feels right. The other option, of course, is not to build up a pre-combustion fleet at all, but that comes with it's own set of drawbacks. Suffice it to say, how this all went down didn't really sit right with me, but I didn't know what else to do given the circumstances. However, with the hammers I sunk into ships modified by drydocks, 3 frigates and 2 ironclads sunk doesn't represent as huge a loss as it might seem.

Point being, I moved 1 ironclad and 3 frigates (1 wounded), northeast to continue blockading Sulla; while the final ironclad maintained my blockade around the island cities.

t183

I gained sight on Sulla's missing Heroic Epic city of Crescendo, founded in a the mirror location to Orleans. Sulla upgraded three ironclads into destroyers, and moved the two frigates into the canal fort. Additionally, he had deployed a new ironclad onto Crescendo's fish and finished another destroyer in the city. In the face of all these destroyers, I dispersed my 5 ships. My aim was to force him to expend a turn mopping them up, then another turn healing, before heading for my coastline. With any luck, the ships' sarrifice would give me a couple turns to get destroyers of my own into the water to prevent a renewed naval choke of Trafalgar and Vigo Bay.

t184

Sulla kills all five vessels, as expected; four with destroyers, an the wounded frigate with an ironclad. Unfortunate, but again, I didn't see a viable alternative. Meanwhile, in the northern sea, I had been blockading Thunder Claws with 2 frigates and an ironclad. I withdrew these vessels into my coastal cities. There is an excellent canal location south of the city and I was concerned Sulla may build a fort and attempt to kill my ships. Why save these and not the other five? I don't know, I don't like getting my shit killed. Another option I thought of with the benefit of hindsight would have been to delete all my ships. Sulla's ships were probably each at 4xp from drydocks, so I effectively gave each a 2nd promotion. Still, had I done this, he would have been able to proceed directly to my coastline without having to stop to kill my ships. The one bright spot of this turn was that Sulla, for some reason, left one of his galleons outside Map Control. I flawlessly killed it ith my Combat III frigate. Guessing it was a misclick.

t185

Nothing happened of interest. I continued to queue up destroyers while I imagine Sulla was doing the same and consolidating his forces.

t186





Sulla pillaged Trafalgar's fish with four destroyers, and sent another one south to blockade around Vigo Bay and Verdun.

At this point, I esimate his naval strength to consist of:

7 Destroyers (5 Confirmed)
2 Frigates
3 Galleons

Before playing t186, my own naval strength consists of the following:



On a completely unrelated side note, look how close I am to a GG!



I'm going to try and get that 11xp before the epic battle for Beijing commence and start dramatically driving up the cost.

I have three destroyers finishing up EOT, and more coming down the tubes:



So, the immediate plan is to rally my forces and break the blockade. Within a couple turns, I should have enough of a numerical superiority to force Sulla to withdraw or be destroyed.

Note to Self: Place a couple machine guns in the canal fort to make sure Sulla doesn't kill them with ground units.

Here are each of my cities under blockade:

Trafalgar



Trafalgar will begin losing citizens in 6 turns, hopefully I can break the blockade before the happens.

Vigo Bay



Vigo Bay hasn't started starving yet, but probably will next turn when Sulla extends his blockade and pillage the whales. Probably going to draft a population away here to reduce the negative fpt.

Verdun



I really need to get a worker down here to RR those mines and workshop those plains. I'm planning on drafting here as well to prevent excessive starvation

The second priority is to re-establish visibility of the approach routes to all my cities. I doubt Sulla will try anything against me right now given Team #1's efforts against Team #2, but you can never be too careful. I'm deploying machine guns to all my coastal cities to be sure they stay safe. Other than 3 machine guns and a rifle healing in Leipzig, I've withdrawn the rest of my machine guns and rifles to Dien Bien Phu:



From here, they can reach any of the following cities in the event that they're threatened, courtesy of railroads: Leipzig, Poitiers, Louisbourg, Calais, Trafalgar. Team #4's army of fifty something units is still sitting in Orleans. Thoth has stationed 3 guerilla II rifles and a sentry cavalry on the hill south of the city, giving them visibility into Leipzig. While I would be annoyed if they invaded, it wouldn't be the end of the world. They move in, I slap a score of machine guns and rifles into the city, their attack gets nowhere. What I'm hoping to convey through the small garrison (3 MGs, 1 Rifle) is: "I'm not planning on attacking you right now, go after someone else? Of course, he might just take it as a sign of weakness, but hey, worth a try. Pillaging would be really annoying....

The ultimate priority is to clear the seas and open up naval support for the attack on Help, Pix!, which will get underway sometime in the next several turns. I'm going to take a force of cannon, rifles, and machine guns out of Dien Bien Phu and push down the ismus. The plan is to settle an aggressive city to instantly reclaim the tiles leading up to the fort, use workers to railroad all the way up, kill the stack with cannons and rifles, then push on to Help Pix! I expect it will fall without too much issue as it can only be reinforced by sea. Taking it will also give me visibility on any incoming Sullan ships. Drafting is going to help me to be ready to embark on this attack quickly.



As I mentioned in Shoot's thread, this turn I revolted into NH. The cool-down period had ended for the revolt and the unhappiness was coming off the cities I had whipped 6 turns before. However, I didn't want to revolt into slavery just yet and lose all the CS hammers. So, instead,I opted to revolt into Nationhood. While losing the bureacracy boost on my capital hurt a lot, it reduced expenses enough to make it worthwhile. With so much gold going to funding the Army for Operation Armageddon, I need to do everything to save possible.

Here is what it did to our expenses and BPT:

[SIZE="3"]Before[/SIZE]



[SIZE="3"]After[/SIZE]



So, that pretty much sums up the military side of things. We have a continuing naval war with Sulla, a tense border with Nabaxo, while in the background I'm preparing to assault Help Pix! As a side note, this turn, borders from Thoth's Mongolia become visible east of Thunder Claws. It appears the city is wedged between me and Thoth. This means the city is at the end of a long supply line, and could be perhaps taken before many reinforcements arrived. Worth consideration I think - I may come back to that later.

Domestically, the mix of military and civilian builds goes on. On t185, I completed my first pair of Levees:





Seven turns to finish the ironworks.

WK begins whipping settlers to completition this turn, so expansion is about to ramp back up. My workforce is being strained to the limit as it is, but it should be able to handle it. I'm gradually moving my workers south, improving as they go, towards the new city locations. I'm pretty much done improving my northern cities and am now heading for the southern half of my empire.

t184-t185 saw three great people born abroad:



Team #4 birthed a GE, Team #1 stole our Great Scientist, and Team #2 birthed another Great Artist.

That's the 11th or 12th Great Artist from Team #2, they're perilously close....

What is Team #1 doing about it you ask?



Not much

Looks like it's just us against the world.







End Turn.