[SPOILERS] dtay's thread awaits a title

[dtay]

General update

This is the main commodore front. I split stacks at the beginning, but now that I'm dealing with that stack of 50+ cats and 10+ cannons (and then 50+ hitters or various types) I'm playing it safe and staying in a doomstack. Which is presumably what commodore is after with the constant slight retreats, just force me to advance slowly, but not much else to do. I can't make a 2nd safe stack since I have to keep dozens of units back on the defense so he doesn't end around me and retake prior cities.



What I've conquered thus far



Plako only took 1 mainland (well, non-penisular, technically they're the same landmass) city thus far. But next turn looks like he's about to take 3-4 in one fell swoop. Fair to me thus far, no desire to try to get any of those penisula spots.



Gawdzak declared war on me a few turns ago, took these cities, then offered white peace. I accepted, even if I upgraded my massive stack of frigates to destoryers it would lose to his combined arms destroyers/battleships/fighters/AC. No easy way to win a naval war, and I would rather spend resources eating commodore. If he is satisfied with this, I'll leave him be unless a dogpile happens or something. Or I get really bored.



It was a bit strange, because i offered him these exact cities in a peace offering after the 1st turn of war, but he preferred to fight and take them. No skin off my back, but odd. I thought it was because he wanted Sagitta as well, but apparently not.

Planning to steal some tech from Gj up here, I get a better discount on him than Gawdzak, though now that I lost the outermost ring of Islands probably too inconvenient to continue



All is quiet on the 2metra front.



And I think I know why



He's clearly built up a massive navy, and yet doesn't really have massive island holdings and our coastal interactions are minimal. So for whatever reason, he seems to be more worried/concerned/focused on GJ, given what he's invested hammers/upgrades in (no tech progress but no gold buildup)

[dtay]

For some reason have no screenshots from newest turn, but here's what's happened over the last 3

Commodore spent a lot of cats to retake Bigfoot, howeve,r he left a ton of injured cavs and rifles 1NW of Bigfoot.



I strafed them with airships to hurt the top, uninjured ones, then rammed my 37 cavs into them



Eliminated nearly all of commodore cav force and all the seige that was in that stack (abotu 10). There are about 20 cats sitting in bigfoot, and then no other large siege stacks of note. I guarded the cav stack with all of the artillery from my doom stack and then like 2 infantry. Put a few guards on Fool Moon, and sent the rest of the infantry and cannon off to the capital.

The next turn commodore made what was in my opinion an odd decision. Bigfoot seems well guarded in this shot, but it actually has like 2-3 rifles, 20 cats, and ancient trash in it.



And while my cav stack is injured, it's still... cavs. So airships, sacrifice the top few cavs to hurt the rifles, then murder away




The next turn Commodore emptied storm front (the capital), and used everything else in the area to retake Fool Moon (whcih had like 3 infantry and 2 machine guns guarding it). However, on my half of that turn I managed to take all of Storm Front (guarded by like a warrior at this point, so fell easily), Fool Moon (with cavalry from the prior turns attack on Bigfoot) and Bigfoot (with the rest of those cavalary).

That opened up enough roads and left commodore with little enough siege that I think I have everything locked down at this point. All cities are well guarded, many getting culture recently or soon, and 2 stacks that I think are both impenetrable each are advancing on one of the remaining mainland cities.

Random other news - stole flight from GJ last turn and now have my first fighter. Yay airplanes. I dont think I ever got flight in PB13 so this is now the furthest in the tech tree Ive gotten in RB-MP civ.

[dtay]

Recent shots:

Overview




1st stack



2nd stack (was in weird place or I could have put this somewhere more useful)



Except 2nd stack is out of a job



That settler will probably replace one of the razed cities as well. Sad, but not really unfair. Kind of surprised Plako advanced as slow as he did tbh.

Hopefully we do not come to blows over the final scraps and both realize we're much better off not throwing hammers away at each other. He may have tanks, but massed artillery+ air superiority + anti-tanks should keep him at bay until I can steal my way up to industrialism (about 5t from now when 2metra gets electricity, grab that from him and industrialism from gawdzak).

[Ceiliazul]

Espionage economy: almost as much fun as blood!

[Commodore]

Report! Apparently my still-warm corpse enjoyed some further fighting?

How do you feel about your geopolitical position now with the richer half of my lands under heel?

[dtay]

So, entertaining myself in the final turns of the game until TBS or Gav (or GJ i guess but he appears to be less in the running) launches a spaceship.

Where to go you ask? BEYOND THE 38th PARALLEL!

North Korea has been an irritance for too long. They must be punished! I didn't actually spend too long checking how this would all work out beyond seeing that it looked vaguely possible (sims are for cowards), and like, there's nothing to lose.

Anyway, I declared last turn and put about ~120 modern units on a hill in range of NK's frontline. The result:



1 city down


However, NK had a clever trap laid. One I could have caught if I were less lazy about doign fighter scans, but again, only cowards look ahead



4, luckily all unimportant, cities down. I had just assumed NK couldn't have a fleet down here for lack of coastal cities, but he made a canal with forts. I'm moving my (meagre, gawdzak sunk most of it) fleet down south to force them out of there, but until then (about 2 turns) putting guards on those coastal cities.

GJ appears to be joining the party, I appreciate the reinforcements. That'll stop NK's pretty massive fleet (compared to it's national size anyway, classic NK) from coming around north and annoying the former commodorian cost



I don't really care abotu taking cities, I expect the game will end less than 10 turns after they come out of revolt. I just want to make North Korea burn Let's see how it goes.

Oh final note. Somoene has been selling North Korea nukes. That is not ok. You don't sell nukes to the rogue nation, who knows what they'll do with them!

To counter this unjustified aggression, I stole nuclear secrets from TBS and began production on my own line of Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles. North Korea shall burn with no natural fire, but with the fury of a thousand suns.

Or it'll all stalemate anticlimactically.

[dtay]

So 3 cities down. I'll get to a 4th next turn.



My stack has been growing as churn out more troops and move a few from the plako border. I've turned off teching (rather, turned off espionage, just get the default ~1000 points a turn now) and am spending all my gold on rushbuying. Stack is now up to about 200 modern units, and then some cavalry

However, you'll notice that city has tac nukes in it.

So does this one



So I think 2metra is likely setting up a nuclear trap, I left my troops in range of both cities tac nukes (and 2metra's 1 ICBM). While psychologiclaly scary, that's only 32 hits of collateral. 2metra then has another 30 or so artillery. It'll be enough to scratch most of my stack, but even if he then throws all of his hitters at me I should come out fine given I have twice as many troops, more tanks, collateral immune machine guns (well not from the nukes) and the +25% hill defense bonus.

I hope he does that actually, because until he throws his siege at me I have to keep hitting him 1 city at a time for fear of death by artillery if I split into smaller stacks. It'll be quite the bloody battle though if he does.

Goal is to eliminate NK by the end of the game. I think this shouldn't be too hard unless we get a concession upon spaceship launch and no one goes for the capital. That'll tighten up the time schedule.

[dtay]

I should mention, since I don't think I have yet, the real battlefield advantage I have is total air superiority. NK has flight, but I think only around 3-4 fighters across the entire empire. I've pumped out a prety sizeable airforce and have been ripping into any troops left in range every turn (which was a significant fraction of NK's military before I burnt all the front cities).

Now they're furhter back, but I'm building forward cities/forts to give me a range extension.

Other thing I forgot in the above post, you'll notice 2metra burnt Orion (again). Annoying, but a opening I left willingly to make him burn a lot of 2movers hitting into CG-infantry-on-a-hill. Any even close to even hammertrades (easily won the direct hammer trade but then he burnt the city + I lost the local airforce) I can cause at this point I'm willing to take.

[GermanJoey]

Well dtay, we didn't win, but at least we left the earth a much safer place...

[2metraninja]

Good game, Dtay. Not the kind of game I like, but still good.

Well, Jojo, I did not won either, but made the 2 of you not win too, so I count it as 1:2 score lol.

Just kidding of course, game was good and educative.