[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[scooter]

You're right, there's nothing in the document when I checked it on my laptop again. That's crazy; I definitely typed a whole bunch of stuff in there on my phone yesterday. I wonder what happened... Well, I'll make sure to use the laptop next time. Sorry about that scooter.

Ouch. No pressure on the worker stuff by the way. It's definitely beneficial, and it frees me up to put more time into the tactical situation (the actual fun part to me), but no need to kill yourself to get it done either. If you don't get around to it, it'll be fine. But if you do, I'll definitely follow it.

I logged in to check the game state. It looks like REM is going to leave us alone this turn, at least I think. He used an airstrike against some of our infantry but otherwise left us alone for now. He still hasn't finished his turn yet though. I'm still not a fan of that stack of boats/units next to Induction Coil. I know there's a destroyer on top for defense, but it still seems like an invitation to get our stack of ships sunk, all our land units drowned, and then the city captured. I think it's a lot safer to put the units in the city, and the ships down in the southern ocean for now until we can get some more destroyers (and airships) in play. With galleons in Induction Coil, we can reinforce Photography just as easily from the city as from the water a tile north of it, and we can also move along pindicator's rail network into Russia if we would see a chance to attack a juicy REM target. I guess I don't see an advantage to being on the water, and very real danger. Am I missing something here?

I think I'm just generally paranoid about leaving boats in cities, particularly on border cities. Probably unnecessary in this case. I also like putting some mild fear into REM that we'll move deeper into his bay and force him to defend cities he doesn't want to defend. Probably not a realistic threat though considering our Destroyer disadvantage. I always figure the more of your pieces on the board, the more chances for the other guy to screw up. But yeah, in this particular case we're probably better off inside Induction Coil in the short term.

[scooter]

Oh thank goodness, I thought you accidentally loaded everything onto the transport.

Nah, nothing quite that bad. Basically the "Unload" and "Upgrade to Transport" buttons look almost exactly the same. The unload button is basically the upgrade button with an arrow added. I'm honestly surprised I haven't made that mistake before.

The worst part is I did this with our only 0xp Galleon. At least a Nav2 Transport would have been fun, but this one has less moves (5) than most of our Galleons.

I guess we could use it as a Destroyer softener somewhere down the line.

[antisocialmunky]

Well, you could just permanently use it to ferry units across the 1 wide water tile from the island...

[scooter]

Quick look in after turn roll.



Oh that's bad. REM picked up Industrialism. He's got access to Marines, Tanks, and Battleships now.



That's unfortunate. I'm not quite sure if I can get it to good odds with one suicide attack or not.

I'll play this tomorrow night.

[Sullla]

OK, first things first: I did get a chance to look at the game tonight, and I did type up suggested worker micro. The stuff from the last turn is also showing up on my end now, so who knows what was going on yesterday. I checked on my laptop and my phone: it showed up both times. If it disappears again, then I give up.

On to the turn itself! Here's the good news: we have Physics tech. We didn't lose any cities on the last REM interturn.

Here's the bad news: REM has Industrialism now. Our hard tech push took us from being 3 techs behind to being... 2 techs behind. That's a little something, I guess, though it's disturbing how fast REM was just able to get Industrialism, while still building a huge military in the process. This is not good news for any of us. I'm just as concerned about marines as I am about tanks; REM's inability to attack from the sea without unloading first (or suffered the huge amphibious penalty) has probably been slowing him down noticeably. Now he can use marines or City Raider tanks to attack right off the ships. Not a good sign.

But again, all is not lost, as REM has made enemies of basically everyone else in the game, because we can all see that he's going to win if we don't stop him. And we have airships now via Physics tech. In fact, I went through our cities and managed to queue things up such that we finish 9 airships and 5 destroyers next turn. For that very reason, I think we turn off teching for this one turn to pump out all those ships (air/sea heh), and then go back to teching next turn. We can do Electricity in 3 turns without doing anything too crazy, just holding 100% science with Wealth builds while leaving the core production cities free to build military, and I think that's what we want to do. Also we can see via espionage (woot!) that Dreylin will finish Electricity next turn, and by delaying a turn, we can get the known civ beaker bonus. Every little bit helps.

Dreylin has this offer for us when I logged into the game:



I canceled and we can reoffer if desired. Scooter, I have no idea what this means. Can you figure it out (?) One other Dreylin note: he's about to get Electricity (and has Biology) tech, but Dreylin is missing Railroad and Combustion. That's a bit of an different tech path compared to us. Perhaps he wanted the Electricity commerce boost for the last 2/3 of his Golden Age?

Other smaller thoughts:

* Do you have the time to sim out how much damage we can expect a frigate or ironclad to do against that exposed destroyer? We would really like to wipe out that exposed ministack of REM's if possible. The ideal scenario would be sacrificing a frigate (or two) to get a couple hits on the REM destroyer, then use our destroyer to kill his damaged destroyer, followed by our ironclad to kill his full health frigate, and a frigate to kill his damaged frigate, with everything limping into Photography afterwards for safety. I don't know if that will work though, so we should really test with a quick sim, and I don't have the time. Maybe test this, and if it doesn't look promising, then hold off? We'll have airships next turn, and a destroyer out of Induction Coil, remember - no need to lose ships now.

* Pindicator moved all his units out of the city right next to Induction Coil (Kahalevsky). I wonder if he's trying to bait REM into a trap, or simply pulling back to grounds where he can defend. That city will be completely surrounded by our culture if it does get captured, so we may have a chance to make a play on it. More likely, REM razes it... which might open up a chance for us to put a settler down there in the freed up space. I actually think we hold off on founding the corn city for one turn, to see if we can use our settler (already conveniently right there!) to found a much better replacement city. Thoughts?

* We are REALLY exposed in the south right now. I think that's unavoidable, as if Dreylin comes after us now the game is over, but could we not leave our new city on southern island completely empty? That seems like tempting fate a wee much.

* I also think we might want to shift some of those frigates in the southern ocean over to the east for possible use against REM. Yes, they're very outdated, but you never know. And ditto for some of our cannons sitting in our back lines. We may as well move them down to Induction Coil for potential use in pindicator's culture, where we can ride the rails and hit his stacks.

* Worker V on the southern island should leave the forested rice alone, I think. It's a 3/1 tile as a forested rice; cutting it down and farming it only makes it 4/0, and it's going to a city that has plenty of food. Not worth it IMO.

Anyway, those are my thoughts for the moment. I'll check the game again in the morning before I leave to see what happens. We survived one turn without losing anything; now let's survive one more and get airship vision, then see what we see from there.

[scooter]

Turn 334

So I made a choice about REM's Destroyer. It's already C2, and then it picked up another victory on the turn. I'm not really sure if it's close to a 3rd promo or not, but considering I'm expecting more Destroyers to show up, I felt we needed to kill it badly. The Destroyer was 28.8h with Combat2. I sacrificed both a Frigate and an Ironclad.

Frigate: 10% withdraw lose (25.8h)
Ironclad 10% withdraw lose (19.2h)

I thought about two Frigates, but as far as I could tell that was far from a guarantee at a win with our own Destroyer. But the Ironclad did just enough.



C2 Destroyer vs 19.2h C2 Destroyer: 89% WIN (8.4h)



I then shuffled our super-medic into Photography with the Destroyer where we'll be able to heal rather quickly. I had to leave his other two Frigates, but honestly those aren't the units I'm concerned about. It may seem like a steep price to get the kill, but I think it's totally worth it. I doubt we'll see another opportunity to make use of a Frigate or Ironclad, so it seems worthwhile to take the opportunity.



I did ferry a trio of Infantry over here into Battery. I think I'll pull the Machine Gun off (we could use that somewhere else), and I'll send one Infantry to Barbed Wire (giving us 4 there), one to Antiseptic, and one can stay in Battery. That sound about right?



I actually forgot about the idea to hold off on settling this spot until seconds after I settled it. Hopefully I don't regret that. That said, I'm not so sure that settling on the contested land is going to be worth it. We're going to struggle enough to defend our existing cities as-is, let alone a new city.



I did do this though - I defended pindicator's city for him. I gave one Infantry CG and the other C2 Pinch. REM can probably still kill that if he wants, but this ought to at least ensure it costs him a few units to do so. I think it's better to do this and free pindicator up to use all his units defensively. If he loses this city, it's one less city that can get him fresh units. I don't really want to see that happen. After we do some airship scouting next turn we can re-evaluate whether defending it is still worthwhile.



Airships and Destroyers everywhere. Hopefully we aren't too late. I'm really concerned that we're about to see Battleships roll in, but what else can we do. Next half-dozen turns will be white-knuckle while we wait for Dreylin to join.



It's painful how much more dependent we are on building research for tech than REM apparently is.

[scooter]

Oh. I was thinking about the Dreylin trade offer. I was trying to figure out if it was a countdown, but that didn't make sense. I actually think it's a loan proposal of some sort. Typically that's what lump sum for gpt means.

Now, why exactly he wants us to loan him 4g is a different story. Actually, as I type this it occurs to me he may be offering the opposite, but he's unable to request gpt from us due to running the deficit. Maybe he wants to loan us gold? I suppose we could use that to do a few ship upgrades. Ship upgrades aren't exactly very cost-effective, but desperate times... We may be better off waiting a couple turns and then using it to burn towards Industralism - depending on how favorable of a loan he'd be willing to offer.

In any case, if that's what it is, he'll be able to make the offer this turn if he gets in before we play. So let's just wait and see if he offers something different this turn? If not, then I've got no idea what else it could be.

[scooter]

Turn rolled. Remember that bit about white-knuckle?

Well, first, let's start with the good news.



Using one of our fancy new airships we can see that the south front is totally safe for another turn or two. That might be just about the only safe thing.



imperial_march.mp3

In case the horrible signs are difficult to read, we're looking at:

* 2 Destroyers next to Antiseptic
* 2 more SW-S of Silkmoths (plus old ships)
* Destroyer + 6 move Transport S-S of Silkmoths
* A pair of 4-move Galleons bringing up the rear.

It seems clear that REM's strategy here is to try to deal us some serious pain before Dreylin piles on. May even be trying to extract a peace deal from us, although he didn't offer peace this time.



Here's the land units. I'm seriously wondering if we ought to consider abandoning Zipper. It's on flatland and not especially easy to defend, but much more importantly there's this.



If he advances the Transport a full 6 tiles this coming turn (no reason he wouldn't unless it's to burn a city of ours), it will be capable of hitting Penicillin, Haber, and Power Loom on the following turn. He'll be able to do that while still tying down our front cities of Zipper and Antiseptic due to the two follow-up Galleons that are trailing.

I'm struggling to see a way we come out of this with 0 cities lost. We can definitely get a few more Destroyers in here, but I doubt it'll be enough. Any thoughts? Here's our defenses pre-turn.



That's two Infantry on the fort, the highlighted tile is obviously Spinning Jenny, and the rest are signed. We do have another 4-5 Infantry down in Photography that may free up shortly if that Transport gets out of range of it.

My general thoughts are something like this:

* We load up some of those units from Induction Coil since that's no longer under pressure, and we slide them into Photography.

* We then slide some Photography units up to the Spinning Jenny/Power Loom area, freeing up a few of those units.

* We take some of the Spinning Jenny units (2-3 Infantry at the most) and load them up on boats and dump them in Contact Process (Galleons must end turns in cities now due to REM Destroyers). We use those combined with a few more units from our western front to defend the core.

* We seriously consider outright pulling out of Zipper. In this scenario we'd pull all 6 Infantry back into Antiseptic, and then pull some of those units back to Penicillin.

I'm less certain on that last point. But I think it has to be on the table at the very least.

I'll sleep on this and tackle this tomorrow night. Very interested in any thoughts you may have, Sullla.

[Sullla]

Well, as you might guess I do have a couple of thoughts to add.

Turn 335
Our peace treaty with Dreylin has expired
5 turns remaining on REM/Dreylin enforced peace

Let's start with the macro picture first. I'm pretty sure that REM wants us out of this war so that he can focus on devouring pindicator in peace. REM took another city from pindicator on the last turn, but he was forced to raze it, not capture it. I think REM has gained about five cities total so far, mostly on some of the other islands - he hasn't been making too much progress in pindicator's heartland. If we left the war, then REM would be free to attack with impunity, and I suspect pindicator wouldn't last long. REM also has to worry about BGN, who has all the techs that we do except Combustion. BGN should get that soon (he's in a Golden Age along with Dreylin) and then there's another team with oil-based ships that REM will have to worry about. So I'm pretty sure he wants us out of the war, and is trying to pressure us to get out. Maybe I'm misreading this, but that's my guess based on this northern swing by his units.

The Demographics are surprisingly promising:



We continue to hang about 250 Production behind REM, which has been constant for a while now. At least it's getting smaller in percentage terms; I think his Japanese unique building Shale Plant (10% extra production) along with Statue of Liberty free Engineers is probably making a difference here. We're at least within shouting distance. Food is really close, and Land is really close. We're not running that far behind REM, at least until his captured pindicator cities come out of resistance.

This GNP number is with us running regular Wealth builds to stay at 100% science, not using Build Research. We would likely be #1 here except that Dreylin is in a Golden Age doing a tech push. We've been above REM on the GNP bar graphs for a good little while now. Electricity should take 3 turns at this rate, and will give our economy another minor little boost, especially at the capital. I don't think we're closing the gap with REM necessarily, but we aren't falling further behind either. If we can hold out on the battlefield for now, we'll be in pretty good shape. (And assuming Dreylin doesn't take a swing at us!)

Now for tactics. First things first: let's calibrate the range of REM's airships, shall we?



Here's what tiles REM can hit from Silkmoths. It's his closest city to us, so anything outside this red box can't be targeted by his airships. REM will be running a risk if he tries to push too much further forward than this, as his ships will be moving outside the area where his air power can cover them. And until he gets battleships in the water, we're at tech parity right now. I think we may have a chance to sink a lot of his navy here if he moves it forward aggressively. (We got a good trade last turn when scooter lost an ironclad and a frigate to sink a destroyer. Let's try to do it again.)

I don't think we can take on REM's navy this turn. We don't have the ships in position to do so, either destroyers or airships. This will be a positioning turn for us. For airships, any airship that can reach one of REM's destroyers should airstrike it this turn. (Side note reminder: airstrikes count as a recon mission for revealing tiles in the fog. We may be able to save some airship actions by doing this.) Most of our airships are of course not in range. We should rebase them to Spinning Jenny, Power Loom, and Antiseptic (remember, maximum of 4 airships per city). These are the cities on the front line that we need to hold. If they all hit the cap, Penicillin is our next best location for airships. We have 9 of them right now, and I think we can have all of them in play for next turn, plus several that we'll be building this turn. That's a significant amount of airstrikes at our disposal.

For our naval ships, I think we position them just outside that red box of airship range. SW-SW of Spinning Jenny is a good spot, as is on top of our crabs resource by the stone (to prevent it getting pillaged). Remember that coastal tiles get the +10% defensive bonus, so I doubt Dreylin will attack with his two destroyers up by Antiseptic. However, we do need to cover old outdated ships with our destroyers so that don't get insta-gibbed by REM's destroyers.

I think this is the key tile for next turn:



If REM has too many ships for us to fight, we stack our own ships here and dare him to come through us. (We could even put the Great General Medic III unit next to that tile and get perfect healing!) Let me be clear though: that's a spot to occupy *NEXT* turn, not this one. It would be suicide to move there right now.

I do not think we need to abandon Zipper. That would give REM another forward airship base, and make our defense in the north harder. He can only hit the city with a single transport this turn, and I don't think 4 units attacking amphibiously have any chance to capture Zipper. Next turn may be a different story, but we'll deal with that when we get there. Basically, we stall for time this turn and see how things look next turn.

There's a good chance that we can kill a lot of REM's ships next turn. I actually think the smart play is to sit back and build a few battleships, then come at us with an unbeatable naval stack. I'm hoping he keeps moving in with this current force, which I think we may be able to sink and kill. Here's what we can have next turn:



We have 6 total destroyers right now. We can move 4 of them into position just outside the red box airship range this turn, in preparation to attack next turn (these are circled in yellow). I have also circled Haber Process and Spinning Jenny, which can build two more destroyers at the end of the current turn. That gets us 6 destroyers available for next turn. We'll have more promotions than REM on nearly all of these ships, and we'll be attacking at full strength against non-full strength ships because we'll get in the first airstrikes. Again, if he moves in this turn with the ships we're seeing right, I think we have a chance to smash them pretty good.

(The red squares are destroyers that can't get into the fight next turn. One is the wounded destroyer from last turn healing, the other is a new destroyer making the long trek from Battery. It also goes without saying that all our old ships in the north sea should also move into position for cleanup attacks, finishing off damaged units, etc. They may be needed next turn.)

Other small thoughts to add:

* With REM moving away from the south, we should ferry a bunch of the units at Induction Coil over to Photograph this turn. That gives us a chance to use them on Textile Island if REM would decide to land there, or ferry those units north to Zipper/Antiseptic for defense. Basically, we just keep playing zone defense right now and hope that Dreylin comes help us soon.

* Similarly, the cannons in our central core should move up the rails towards Antiseptic. They can be in range to attack a landing at Antiseptic next turn.

* There's a stack of five ironclads over by Hydraulic Ram, which we may as well start moving towards the front lines.

* I'm worried about REM cutting the railroad line to Antiseptic and Zipper. I have workers moving into place to build a second railroad line into Antiseptic; Zipper will have to wait until next turn for us to do something with our workers. We grabbed the pigs tile this turn from REM, but it's going to flip back to him next turn without us having a chance to retain the tile, and I worry about him moving units next to the city. Not much we can do though; my hopes are resting on REM overplaying his hand here and giving us a chance to sink his ships.

* We have two forest chops completing in Antiseptic this turn. That might be enough to complete a machine gun in between turns; can you check to see if that's possible? I have it on airship for now assuming that we'll fall short. A machine gun up here would be pretty nice against the presumable infantry that REM will be landing.

Overall, we've got full scale late Industrial era warfare going on right now, and it's pretty awesome. I've never had the chance to play this in a Pitboss before, and it's so much fun.

[Sullla]

Two more micro notes I thought of while reading the initial post:

* Make sure we only put 3 airships in any frontline city building another airship this turn. I don't know what happens if we build an airship and there's already 4 of them inside the city; probably forces us to rebase it, which would be wasteful.

* For airstrikes this turn, we want to hit REM destroyers that are going to move on his turn. That means not airstriking the destroyers next to Antiseptic, because they'll probably just sit in place not moving, and will get a (very small) amount of health back. The ships moving west though, they can't stop to heal without sitting in place uselessly, so those are the ones to airstrike if at all possible. I think this affects like 1-2 of our airships this turn, but hey, every little bit counts.