Gandhi of France: The Non-Violent Warrior

[fluffyflyingpig]

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

Three lines on the power graph marked 'Dave' say otherwise.

[SevenSpirits]

Seven turns to finish the ironworks.

I whirl dramatically around and glare intently at the under-contruction Ironworks. For a moment, nothing happens. But then, the Ironworks is scared into action and pulls itself together. Walls are finished, machinery clicks into place and the furnaces are lit. The smokestack hastily forms on the roof and begins emitted a noxious but productive smog. "OK OK I'm ready to go!" the Ironworks says. Satisfied, I smile.

[Krill]

...

[oledavy]

I whirl dramatically around and glare intently at the under-contruction Ironworks. For a moment, nothing happens. But then, the Ironworks is scared into action and pulls itself together. Walls are finished, machinery clicks into place and the furnaces are lit. The smokestack hastily forms on the roof and begins emitted a noxious but productive smog. "OK OK I'm ready to go!" the Ironworks says. Satisfied, I smile.

Thank you Seven, you just made my day

I was literally rolling on the floor laughing.

[NobleHelium]

I don't think I gave you approval to revolt into me.

[zakalwe]

I whirl dramatically around and glare intently at the under-contruction Ironworks. For a moment, nothing happens. But then, the Ironworks is scared into action and pulls itself together. Walls are finished, machinery clicks into place and the furnaces are lit. The smokestack hastily forms on the roof and begins emitted a noxious but productive smog. "OK OK I'm ready to go!" the Ironworks says. Satisfied, I smile.

[timmy827]

oledavy, joining the chorus thanking you for providing great writeups, has been a big part of keeping me lurking this game.

[oledavy]

oledavy, joining the chorus thanking you for providing great writeups, has been a big part of keeping me lurking this game.

My pleasure

[SIZE="4"]Turns 186-187[/SIZE]

The last couple turns have been pretty quiet on the Eastern Front. All eyes are on the Indian/Roman Army marching towards the Chinese capital.

The North:



Thoth and Nabaxo have thankfully made no aggressive moved towards Leipzig. Between the sentry forces on the hill and the forces within the city itself, their army consists of:

3 Cavalry
6 Knights
18 Rifles
14 Musketeers
6 Pikemen
8 Trebuchets
9 Catapults

64 Units Total

I was hoping he would have moved off by now, seeing me not making any aggressive moves. Seems it will not be the case.

Elsewhere, Sulla pillaged Verdun's crabs and is holding off the coast, blockading me.





Trafalgar is now losing food at a stable 2fpt. I'm going to see if I can break the blockade before the city starves, if not, I'll draft it.



Vigo Bay and Verdun have both been drafted twice, using their garrisons to deal with the extra unhappiness. I may draft both one more time, just to mak sure the pop doesn't go to waste. It'll all come down to when I can break the blockade.





All, in all, though, this blockade is a lot less painful than the previous blockade Sulla hit me with. My cities are hurting, yes, but I'm better situated to handle it this time around.

Sulla now has 6 visible destroyers, and I imagine they're at least another pair off in the fog. At EOT t187, I have 9 completed. Pretty much every coastal city is getting a drydocks and spamming destroyers to hold Sulla at bay.

Of course, the equation will change again when Sulla gets industrialism. I gained a lot of experience with late game naval wars PBEM17, and have a healthy respect for battleships and bombers. At that point, my destroyers will be unable to end their turns out at sea, and will have to remain in port, lest they be destroyers by battleships. At that point, I'll only be striking out to break the blockades. Once we both get battleships, offensives basically become impossible for both sides, unless you have overwhelming force. Destroyers will be useful until the end of the game though, so every one I'm building will be used.

What I'm really looking forward to, however, is flight. If PBEM17 taught me one thing, its that air power dominates the modern era. We're well on track to get bombers n the air before Team #1 does, which would be a welcome boon. Once we get there, I intend to start spamming air forces and bombing Sulla into oblivion.

Actually, this is a good place to start talking about my vision for how we're going to win this thing. Provided we actually stop Team #2's culture victory, It will be us and Team #1 in a slugfest until the end of time. I don't expect they'll agree to banning a space victory whenever I propose that to them, and we won't be able to beat them in a Space Race. So, what will we do?

Remember WK's post about producing Commando Mech Infantry?

Provided we get all the GGs we need out of the battles in China, our target unit will be mechanized infantry. We produce a shit ton of those, and I secure naval control of the eastern sea. Then, in one titanic turn, I take a coastal city and unload a horde of mechanized infantry. With any luck, we raze a half dozen of Sulla's core cities, most importantly the capital, Requiem. Hopefully, a surprise strike like this will gut Team #1's research and production potential, and allow us to secure the victory. So, yeah, for those of you who read my PBEM17 thread, Operation Going Commando, Mark 2!

At any rate, we haven't discussed this plan as a team yet, and it is certainly a long way down the road.

Here is my military as of this turn:




All of my threatened coastal cities have a couple machine guns and rifles in them, with 4 longbows split between Louisbourg and Verdun. The majority of my forces have been placed in Dien Bien Phu, preparing for my strike agianst Help Pix!



I'm going to get a couple more cannons in the stack, then go ahead. Here's hoping Thoth doesn't strike me while my back is turned.

My plan to flip the tiles with a new city will no longer work, as they no longer have a majority of French culture. However, I can still just swamp Sulla with units, take the city, slap a few machine guns in there, then dare him to do anything about it. Now that my forces are sufficient to guard my cities and engage Sulla, I'm starting to contribute forces to Shoot again. Machine guns and rifles mostly

At any rate, that's the military side of things.

Here's the t187 MFG Graph:



And here are the workshopped cities that are powering this MFG:















Of course, this comes at the expense of Sulla stomping me in a GNP hole:



He's making nearly twice as much as me, building financial cottages where I build workshops. Fortunately, this is why we have Shoot on the team And between us, we're competitive. Right now, our army is costing a fortune. With any luck, some pillage gold will help offset that.

With electricity coming online, Watermills and Windmills will be getting nice boosts. I am now all but done improving the north, other than the three workers clearing the jungle around Poitiers. My focus is now around Quiberon Bay and the capital. I'm keeping the workers in the area long enough to divert them to build railroads for my attack on Sulla. At this point, the south could really use the work attention, I only have four of them down here and there is too much to do. It kills me a little to know how many hammers I'm losing every turn from not having the terrain appropriately improved, but there isn't really much to do about it, unless I wanted to build a lot more workers.

I was speaking to Mackoti yesterday, and he inquired why I did not revolt back into Slavery. Now, I didn't actually run the numbers to see what got me more hammers: Caste system orSslavery. However, I have a hunch it will be Caste System. While I would be whipping most of my cities once, it would mean five turns without the CS boost, which I didn't regard as worth it. I'm going to wwait until the CR comes online before revolting into slavery again. Then it will be 1 turn of slavery sweetness.



Heron is staged and ready to rush the wonder in Waterloo, so we're set to go.



At any rate, that's all the news that is fit to print.

End Turn.

[Shoot the Moon]

Did we ever discuss attacking help pix as a team? What exactly do your forces look like? It just seems weird to me that we would go after a team with infantry when we need units up North against China or to defend from Thoth. It just seems to me like attacking now is not the right play--better to use those units elsewhere if you have ones not needed to defend against Sulla.

[scooter]

Perhaps you could use some of the Chinese plunder gold on upgrading those Frigates to Destroyers? I'd imagine many of the Chinese captures should be pretty lucrative. I don't know, just an idea. I do tend to agree that you guys will be better off trying to KO team 1 through some military means given their beaker edge. You guys can close it up a bit, but probably can't completely catch them.