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As a French person I feel like it's my duty to explain strikes to you. - AdrienIer |
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The Pen vs The Sword (Gandhi of NA)
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Mermen and Naga have a long long history of rivalry too, right? And they control relatively little surface territory?
If only you and me and dead people know hex, then only deaf people know hex.
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Ok, maybe there is some interesting stuff to say about the game.
My always peace victory date would be T26 ... 8. If we miss an artist roll, that's a 3-4 turn delay. What can FinHarry do to stop that? Well, I'm almost convinced that they don't have enough time to build and transport sufficient ground troops to raze one of my supercities. I have roughly 2/3 top power and it will all be concentrated around one point. They would need assistance from at least one of GJ or BGN I think. A commando strike should be pretty impossible. So it looks like they will just try to delay me, not stop me. Currently they appear to be bombing the south coast, but that's small fry. Planes need to reach my culture cities to make a difference. They are in range of a couple of Elensefar tiles, I'm going to leave some anti-tank on each and my workers can repair them since we play second. Their planes also appear to be earning xp from the bombing runs, I'm not sure what else explains the 17xp Ace2 bomber I saw this turn. I should test that to confirm. Anyway, that can add an extra 2 range to their fighters, which would put more pressure on Elensefar but still out of range of Weldyn's towns, which are the important thing.(Elensefar and Basilisk are less vulneruble because they're using artists). The other option then that comes to mind is going for Jet Fighters, which would reach the towns. That's off the Spaceship tech path though, so would delay their own victory by 2-3 turns. They can pick it up after they've launched, but then it only affects a couple of turns. And I can delay that effect further. Position some carriers behind my capital, such that fighters will only intercept his jets. And of course, anti-tank as well. SAM would be ideal, but that's probably not reachable. Finally, they have the option of sending a fleet around the back to Basilisk/Weldyn. That's why I've started retreating my fleet in that direction. Who cares about the south anymore? I should be able to hold that, because I'll be there first and I should have enough time to get enough Battleships out. I should also have the advantage in the air for once because they won't have any cities to base planes out of, only carriers. Of course they could overpower me with sheer numbers there eventually but time's ticking and travel time to this location is massive for them. So, they can have some effect on my eta but I should be able to minimise it. T268 is a big stretch though, Weldyn being the hardest. I guess T269 is more realistic. T272 should be doable if we miss one of our artists. Basilisk hits 18k on T267, makes roughly 750cpt and is hard to mess with. In that case Basilisk can steal the Bureau bonus for a while too, could very possibly shave another turn off.
We can't get the 9th artist unfortunately. Even with full pacifism, we're looking at turn 274, which would only help if we miss two artist rolls. In fact, I think I might give up on that artist altogether and start starving Hornshark on scientists.
I have managed to work enough Rep scientists to get Democracy without using the slider. It has amusing affects on our demos:  I wonder can we get below plako in food.  OH was a bit sloppy with his air units this turn too, I sniped two of his isolated interceptors and the bombers finally bombed something!!!
Had some good options in the annoy-Aztec column this turn. Started off with bombing these guys:
 No air support means they'll be easy to deal with when they reach Basilisk Caves. Actually, I probably shouldn't have bombed them yet, played dumb and ambushed them when they got closer. Guess I was impatient, also a bit of a theme this turn. Next up, I had the option of hitting these guys or some more fighters:  I was going to attack here but managed to pull myself back at the last minute. Sneaky Harry had a fleet waiting to catch me:  My airships missed it, but bombers do an auto-recon mission when they bomb and that picked it up. Unfortunately I sent two planes in on attack runs before I noticed, but at least I didn't send in the galleons. Finally, he had left a few planes on intercept. The problem with leaving say 2 fighters on intercept in one city, and two more in another, is that it's relatively easy to bomb something in range of 1 city but not the other. This is what happened last turn, when I got to set up a 2v1, and won the coinflip. If I had lost I'd still have a good chance of knocking out his injured fighter with my second. The other thing I can take advantage of is him leaving 0xp or injured planes on intercept duty. I think he's trying to concentrate the bombing xp on his top fighters but that leaves the bottom of his stack vulneruble. Unfortunately luck didn't smile on me this turn:  The first two combats were C1 or C2 vs 0xp fighters, which I lost. He now has 4 injured fighters on intercept duty in the french cities and they could have been picked off by my two extra planes if I had noticed their fleet earlier.  The second two combats were C2 fighters against 2 of his 3 interceptors on his fleet. I can't see how much xp they had unfortunately, but based on his pattern the last two turns, I decided he was probably using low xp units and bombing with the high xp ones. 1 each is fair enough. The whole thing is pretty impatient of me again though. I should have waited to have the odds a bit further stacked in my favour before he changes his tactics. I haven't really seen anybody write about air warfare before, so I thought I'd put that down. You need to be very careful about using the intercept mission or your planes will get picked off. The only improvements I consider valuable enough to try intercept for are Weldyn's villages. Along with the sneaky fleet I'm pretty sure there weren't this many transports here last turn: So it might be time to try get my southern coast razed. That would make it a lot easier to defend against commandos.
Oh, and I loaned GJ 4700g for 520gpt. Bit risky maybe, but I don't see anyone breaking these loans in a game where they're not going to win anyway. I might as well try make my money work for me while I'm saving.
Not my most inspired turn yesterday. I'm moving house at the minute and played late. Lashing, Arcanclave and Sablestone are all under threat and I basically just shoved as many(~60 each) units as I could in. Still, they probably don't want to attack until they join up the 2 fleets and can hit one of the cities with 40 units instead of 20, so hopefully It will be ok. I should probably give up Lashing and Sablestone(especially vulneruble because it doesn't have a bunker). Arcanclave is Jewish though, so I could use with holding it a bit longer to get the Cathedral up in Basilisk Caves. It's also on a hill, so should be easier to defend.
Traded another 3 fighters each with FinHarry. That island from last turn still only has 3 injured marines defending it, but now they have 4 aircraft in there as well. I was pretty tempted to trade my 2 galleons full of units to kill them. Decided I was better off keeping the galleons to force them to garrison the dtay cities for a bit longer. Either that or they might let down their guard a bit. On the subject of commandos, I'm thinking I should have built some city garrison anti-tank. They wouldn't be hit much from planes and would get decent odds on commando tanks. Other commando units won't get great odds vs well promoted tanks/marines/infantry. Also, broke(under) the 700 food mark. 
T-19
 Lots of good news on the interturn. Two planes shot down by anti-tank makes up for my luck over the previous rounds. They need to win 4/5 rounds to kill a plane so it's pretty unlikely. I guess over the course of our war we've had a lot of interceptions. And Joey's faith in me is apparently restored as he gifts me some SAM infantry! He still doesn't have industrialism, so I should probably gift back tanks or battleships or something, but I'm not pulling stuff off the front right now. I'm not entirely sure what he wants to accomplish here. The best case scenario is making me tough enough that FinHarry go all in, leaving them open to BGN, which incites world war and allows him to catch up. But I don't even think that helps much anymore, even if something happens to FinHarry, BGN is still going to beat Joey to space. There's just not enough time left in the game. That silver pop is actually a negative for me. Starting next turn I should be on 100% culture for the rest of the game, so it's just costing me hammers. Here's our opportunities on the current turn:  There's a fighter on intercept in Browner that doesn't seem to be visible and yes, that's an Aztec transport sitting out in the open to the SW. I've got 5 fighters(2 injured) and 3 bombers who can focus soley on those 3 interceptors so we're going in again.  Unfortunately, one of the fighters we lost was about to be C3 vs a green plane. 3 for 2 will do though and we're almost to our next GG. I'll probably have to call off the air harassment next turn as I rebased my new fighters north to help deal with the incoming mini-Aztec fleet. Next we picked off the transport and retreated into the city.  Then we consider attacking Revis again. If I knew those transports were full I'd do it, but I decided that was unlikely. And the rest of the units just don't seem too important. He's surely got better options than CG marines to land on my shores, he's got plenty of transports and I don't think the sea situation will change much; I'll hold the north, him the south. So, lets hold off for another turn.  Here's my garrison in Arcanclave and Sablestone. He's concentrated everything on Sablestone for next turn but I wasn't too impressed by the level of injury his bombardment gave me this turn. So I healed that up with my GG, pulled the antitanks back from Elensefar to cover the city and beefed up the garrison by quite a bit. Looks fairly hard for him to get odds. Next turn I wouldn't have to defend Underworld, as I'll have completed the Christian Cathedral in Basilisk Caves. Still, commandos can hit an annoyingly large number of cities from Sablestone. Sablestone:  Arcanclave:  Demos and city screens to see my starvation. Though it wasn't so bad this turn because I knew exactly what I needed to complete democracy. I threw in an extra 50b too. I couldn't think of anything that would make me lose beakers but one thing I've learned this game is not to the underestimate the Pitboss!   Soldiers and GNP, what else do you need? |
