[Spoilers] Fintourist and Old Harry have nothing to see here

[pindicator]

2Metra has been drafting and whipping Rifles like a demon. Fortunately our Infantry will make short work of them. Unfortunately he's still got a lot of knights and has saved some money for upgrading to Cavalry, which will pose Infantry more of a problem. Fortunately he doesn't have Mil Trad yet. Unfortunately I don't really see how we can land a sufficiently large force to trouble him any time soon. He's at peace with Willam and has already opened borders with dtay again...

[Molach]

Potassium benzoate ain't bad.

[Old Harry]

Turn 233

Oh-ho-ho-ho! Nice work from 2mn here - he's found somewhere to re-build his navy, safe from our attentions! Its nothing to worry about just yet, and he can't 1-turn us, but we need to have enough force able to hit the ocean tiles N of Ypres, just in case.


His army seems to be heading south towards us again. I'm wondering if a bunch of amphibious Infantry on a flotilla with a GG medic could farm the rifles in a city for XP, GG points and to whittle down his army... Against a fully fortified C1 rifle a C2 amphibious infantry gets 90%, although if there are hills or the rifle has pinch the odds are 65-75%. The units in Bridge look like the best candidates for this kind of treatment, but it probably doesn't really help us much. Also note I've stacked our three frigates here to make them harder to kill - he has four and a privateer, so he can kill some if he wants, but at a bad hammer-exchange. I've also moved another stack of five Frigates to be out of his sight, but closer to his boats.


The reasons it doesn't help us - 54 knights and 45 rifles along with 35 cats. I guess we can't really offer peace either though as then he gets to build up his fleet again.


Thinking more domestically we could put a couple of cities here - neither makes many hammers or grows fast, but each would make about 30 commerce from trade routes... Note also a caravel here that can take a Nav 1 promo to take a Great Merchant to visit Plako...


I drafted Midway, Rorke's Drift, Tet and Ulm, definite future drafts are Somme, Endor and Nuremburg, while Rorke, Quantril, Issy and Xiangyang can all be re-drafted. Then the other options are Dunkirk, France, Hastings, Vittorio Veneto and Watling St.

If we're going to attack dtay in 15 turns we need to do something about his Kannone (there are 30 that I can see here) - we'd need to have a load of artillery or machine guns in any stack we send in to his land. More promising is the threadbare defenses in his northern coastal cities - a transport with Nav I could hit the capital from the fog. Alternatively if dtay builds some railroads a couple of commando units could perhaps hit it...


Demos and power

I didn't end turn in case you want to look at anything FT?

Mmmmmmmmm Potassium Benzoate...

[Old Harry]

Had a chat with Fintourist about going for Fascism before Railroad->Physics->Artillery. It lets us use Police State, and may give us the great general (dtay, Mack and Scooter could all beat us to it). But it delays Artillery and Destroyers by five turns... We could still log in and change as 2mn hasn't played yet, but I think we're better sticking to R-P-A and getting Facism afterwards.

We're going to see if someone will trade us oil and save us having to get combustion. It's in Plako and Scooter's interest for us to stay strong...

I also did some EP testing in the sandbox to check how much dtay knows about us and my main conclusion is that its impossible (at least for me) to tell how many EPs he needs.

[Old Harry]

Turn 234

Well this seems a little unlucky - we won a 72% battle, then lost at 72%, 65% and 12%. And we rolled a low-odds artist (~6%) for the second time in this game - Although we're not as unlucky as Azza, obviously.


We have two airships in striking range, my fiendish plan being to hit the 7.1/8 Frigate, then the Privateer. One of our Frigates can take Nav 1 to then kill said privateer, and then our galleons can take CII to get odds on the galleon. Which might just have units on it...


First battle is C1 Frigate vs injured C2 Frigate 53% - LOSS
Frigate vs injured Frigate 99% - WIN
Frigate vs injured Frigate 99% - WIN


Our Nav 1 Frigate now has 90% against the injured Privateer - and barely scrapes through! Finally a C2 Galleon vs a Galleon (we'll lose our galleon next turn, but we can afford it better than he can, and there might just be units on the thing - Rival Average soldiers is 2 262 111 before the fight)


We win flawlessly and Rival Average goes down to 2 261 111, meaning that 1000 * 9 opponents = 9000 worth of carnage, meaning there was a str 5 unit on board. How disappointing. In the end we lost 4 Frigates and he lost 3 Frigates, a Privateer and a Galleon. I also mis-clicked so that one of our damaged Frigates is exposed, but I don't think he'll take on the battle .

With civstats down no-one can see us draft. I don't know if we should be drafting and hiding the units or not drafting and pretending we produced them... (Edit: well it was back up, so everyone knows what I did ) Either way this is how I've worked out the next four turns of drafting - we'll revolt back to Bureau on t237.

Quantril - 2 workshop - t234
Dunkirk - pl farm, wine - t234
Rorke - 2 coast - t234
Endor - Coast+mine - t234

Hastings - Engy+Merch - t235
Issy - 2 workshops - t235
Midway - 2 coast - t235
Nuremburg - 2 workshop - t235

Somme - 2 mine - t236
Xiangyang - 2 coast - t236
Ypres - 2 mine - t236

Rorke - 2 coast - t237

There might be some other options (VV, Z, Hastings) for drafting on t236 and t237, but lets see how we're feeling when we get there.


Other notes:
I think we should start sandbagging cannons - if we get Artillery in about ten turns the hammers won't decay.
Dtay put 32 EPs into us this turn, we can put 27 into him, by allowing 2MetraNinja to outspend us. Surely keeping Dtay on his toes is more use to us... The Jails in Agincourt and Gallipoli have begun, a couple of others are in their queues.

Power and demos and victory - Mack isn't going for cultural victory just yet (he got Sistine a few turns ago) so we need to expect an invasion next time our peace runs out.

[Fintourist]

Ouch!

for 2metra taking the bait
for him getting away with it with ~1:1 hammer ratio
Although, as you said, losing couple of frigates is not a big loss for us while him losing his start of a possible navy means that it's again that much easier to control our waters.

2nd low odds artist is already more disappointing.. The most probable result was Great Merchant and that gold would have funded couple turns of our research or 10-20 unit upgrades.

Anyways, I like your domestic decisions and starting to pre-build cannons in the near future sounds solid. This is probably a decent time to start new builds although in couple of turns I would like to get some MGs also started

I should be pretty well available for chat today if we want to discuss plans/schedules/anything

[Old Harry]

Turn 235

Galleon lost as expected, but it was a close thing... Also, here go the fireworks! With seven turns of peace left with us and Scooter at war with Azza now could be a good time for Mack to go after Plako. Perhaps this is just for the enforced peace but there is some war weariness and Mack hasn't yet finished his turn. Wish we could see what was going on.


Nothing happened down here yet.


Ah, here we are. Looks real. Keep an eye on Civstats!


This also looks real. Bye bye Azza...


Anyone want to do some invasion planning on this map? We have an artist, so taking Sewer Jack and bombing it sounds like a good idea to me - it might then be possible to fight dtay's Kannone on our territory/terms.


We have an Ironworks, we'll start on factories with the OR/Bureau switch on t237. If Agincourt gets +175% on research and +200% on money should we be saving money next turn or spending it before the switch to Bureau? Workers are poised to start railroading next turn...


Demos and power

[Fintourist]

I guess it's not too big deal re Agincourt whether we save money or spend it, technically it's a bit better to research one turn and then start saving I guess.

Sewer Jack plan looks interesting, downsides are that we make ourselves vulnerable to counter-attack in the west where our core cities are and the eastern shore is currently more vulnerable to mack. But if Commodore has real attack plans towards dtay that is definitely one area where we could make gains.

Interesting to see what that thing between mack & plako is, couple of transports are not too terrifying yet, maybe he is trying to black-mail plako or just wants enforced peace? Obviously I'm crossing my fingers for a bloody war..

And mack's power is rising and rising.. Our infantry drafts should become visible soon, but they are still nothing compared to his MFG capabilities.. If that power looks to be heading our way we need to start converting our GNP into soldier points as well via upgrades.

And for railroads!

[Old Harry]

Turn 236

So farewell Lewger, with the second best capital and two of the better players in the game what went wrong? Also Mack just wanted peace (or to extort some cash) from Plako. I think this means our dtay invasion plans are off. How do we defend our southern border against his double-our-power army in six turns?


I've been wondering where Mack's power is going - there are very few units on his mainland to account for that massive power spike (there are a fair few in border cities, but not nearly enough) - this is the biggest stack I've found, and scary as it is I'd expect a lot more units, so I'm going to guess that he's loading everthing onto transports and will be going after our coastline .


This means we're going to need to concentrate our forces somehow - we need to choose now if we defend the mainland (east or west?), the island or both.
- If we concentrate on the mainland then he'll be able to take the island off us (not as quick as we took it from Ichabod, but quick enough)
- If we concentrate on the island then our commercial core becomes vulnerable
- If we spread over both then Mack can probably still make progress, slow progress, but it'll be where he chooses

Any thoughts? Costs for upgrading units are:
- Axe (we have 12)/Bowman (18)->Infantry/MG: approx 300 gold
- Musket (33) -> Infantry: 200 gold
- Rifle (13) -> Infantry: 110 gold
- Cat (28) -> Cannon: 170 gold
- Cat (28) -> Artillery: approx 300 gold
- Cannon (19) -> Artillery: approx 120 gold
- Knight (15) -> Cav: 110 gold
- Cuir (23) -> Cav: 80 gold
Will we get to Artillery before Mack can attack? No. But we can get it soon after. Are upgrades going to be more important to us though? We're saving 1500 a turn right now. I'd like to have Destroyers in the water so we aren't totally at Mack's mercy navally (like last time), but if we can't actually afford any then what is the point?

It turns out that Railroads do give +1 hammer to mines (for some reason I assumed that the change to Replaceable Parts had removed that) so we'll build a defensive network that travels from hill to hill.

Drafts left to do:
Somme - 2 mine - t236
Xiangyang - 2 coast - t236
Ypres - 2 mine - t236
Vittorio Veneto - 2 coast - t236

Rorke - 2 coast - t237
Nuremburg - silk, workshop - t237
2 more? Zanzibar and Hastings?

Looks like dtay has another golden age planned - I guess he'll revolt out of Nationhood at that point.


In light relief over on our 2metra border he's decided to go all North Korea - turning cottages into forts (seriously we need to keep some units in VV just in case this is an invasion canal).


Demos and power - we added thirty Infantry over the last five turns, so Mack must be producing three times as much power without the added costs of drafting. We're doomed .

[Old Harry]

I'm not going to get to the turn until pretty late tonight, so if you want to keep things rolling feel free to play - Rorke and Nuremburg need drafting, then you can make a judgement on where else (perhaps Zanzibar and Hastings?)

I think we decided to just switch back to Bureau and stay in Theocracy since either Mack is coming for us in five turns or we're going for dtay in ten turns, we need units now, not factories...

Also: build railroads on mines first.

Also pt2: Azza just razed a dtay city I have no idea where or how, they aren't neighbours...