[Spoilers] Dreylin's short visit to a late Era

[Dreylin]

Yeah, time to make like the UK and Brexit from Donovanland.




EDIT: I guess I completely underestimated Donovan's desire to stick it to us verses get out of a game in which he's now irrelevant. Well actually I suppose not completely irrelevant since there's an element of kingmaking here in this last choice.

[Dreylin]

Preparing for Dunkirk:


I offered both REM & Donovan White Peace; if either takes it we can land and hit out, otherwise we drop everything in Zebu and evacuate Alpacas & Honey Bees (& Guineafowl in the North)

Industrialisation underway:


I figure that we wait until most of the Factory/Coal Plants to be up and then kick off the GA to research with max hammers.

Oh, and this happened:


Ugh.

[OT4E]

I had no doubt hewas going to settle there. This is really bad position for us. So if we once return to attack this will be the first priority target.

[Dreylin]

t329 (pre-turn) -

REM counter-offered:


I rejected because it's a large chunk of our income, but looking at it again, maybe it wasn't such a bad deal. Donovan rejected of course. We could postpone the evacuation and make REM a counter offer, but there's no guarantee he'd take it since he's lining up at Guineafowl:


8 Cavs in ZO to follow, but we can pack quite a few units into the city - a dozen Cavs for starters.

Also, what do you think about this cheeky plant:


It's terribly vulnerable (where isn't?), but we'd get control of most of Barbed Wire's tiles from the residual culture from Rats.

Probably a stupid idea and we'd be better planting the filler up by the Deer or just holding the Settler for combat duty.

[OT4E]

Yes, that city on the island is indeed terrible, he will take it on the first turn of war which will happen soon.

About REMs proposal the price is not high, but what do we gain? Do you think we can keep DZ's land? I am not sure how will it serve us in long term. Definintely they will both attack us again. But if we stick to what we have in the core and stack units I doubt they will risk to go in any soon. We only need to get enough defenders for attack from sea. My inner voice tells me that we need to retreat and lose small but not be target number one any longer.

Unfortunately I continue having a busy days and cant watch game detaily, have to work during this week-end whole day long. So I do not insist on anything.

[Dreylin]

Yeah, on reflection I don't disagree with you; better to preserve our resources to protect what's really important than try to maintain an elongated front that isn't profitable.

I pulled out of Alpacas and Honey Bees, but left a token force in Guineafowl:


With eleventy billion Cavalry lined up behind it. I re-offered the White Peace to REM & Donovan.

Oh, BGN switched into military civics (PS, Theo, Vass) and pindicator advanced his stack towards our border city - but that's probably just watching for easy picking at our corpse...

Coal Plants are starting to roll off and the first Drydock was queued this turn. If we get a reasonable Peace offer from REM, I think we pop the GA and see how far we can get towards Combustion....

[Dreylin]

For resource disconnecting, the lurker consensus is that a 1-2-1 turnsplit, where team 1 may only move workers/do city micro in their second login, could work. It shouldn't slow the game much, because all the tactics would be done already. If team 1's second login happens last, so they roll the turn - then they can immediately play their first half; it shouldn't cost any more time than a regular 1-2 turnsplit.

I'm not entirely convinced this would work because of how exposed our Oil supplies are to amphibious interferrence; consider this entirely cheesy scenario:

Player 1 plays, saving Workers to reconnect Oil.
Player 2 bombards Oil.
Player 2 uses fast Transport to drop an Explorer unit onto Player 1's Oil then retreats back to safety
Player 1 is allowed to move Workers only, so can't displace the Explorer and can't reconnect Oil.

The only recourse is to block the tile with Navy (hard if player 1 does not have an Oil-based Navy) or garrison the Oil tile - which draws away from other borders. Probably wouldn't shake out like that, but still, it could potentially happen for a few key turns.


Anyway, with the positioning of the Oil, probably the best solution is to Fort it and maintain a garrison to prevent silly amphibious shenanigans.

[Mardoc]

I would tend to think that if you can be invaded amphibiously without recourse, your opponents' airpower is the least of your concerns.

The rule's not perfect, no. It's up to y'all if the problem is big enough to be worth going to full-Sequential or if you'd rather have pace. Turnsplit order already matters for lots of other reasons, it's just normally considered to be small enough to live with.

[Dreylin]

t330 -

REM took 2 cities and burned both; I assumed it was HB & Alpacas, but it turned out he left HB untouched and hit Guineafowl instead. Leaving this offer:


I thought about it and we have 5t left on the Scooter Peace and all our troops tied up, so I accepted.

Turns out it was probably the right decision:


We still have Honey Bees, but Donovan might decide to take that from us; I'm 1t a Worker with the overflow (which can run away through Scooter's land) and then will set it on Wealth until someone decides to relieve us of it.

Troops are now streaming back towards the core to set up defenses against a potential Scooter hit:


I also have the Settler & GArt stashed in a ship in the channel offshore Chickens; not sure if we should plant him somewhere, or just save for future combat Settler duty?

Haven't popped the Golden Age yet; I think I'll give it one more turn to complete a set of Coal Plants and then go next turn:


Still not certain what balance to set on research vs. unit builds. For example this turn I could 1t a Grocer at Llamas to mitigate -4health, but stuck with the Infantry.

Not sure whether you'll be able help out while I'm away, but thoughts would be appreciated.

[OT4E]

REM has got Combustion already, damn SoL is doing great job. If scooter wants to win this he really cant go into war with us.

Settlers are more important than units, we need to fill all the spots and wait for the chance. About building I do not think we really need any except factories. The less developed city is the less we suffer when we lose it. Small cities, whipping and being readdy to replant them without much pain that's what we can do here.