[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[scooter]

So my understanding of airstrikes is still hazy because I've done about 10 of them ever. Because Destroyers have a 30% chance of intercepting, that means we should expect to lose quite a bit of our airships on the attack, right? And does that stack - if there's two Destroyers, does that mean a 60% chance of losing our airship (90% for 3, guaranteed past 3)? And finally - if an airship is intercepted, does it die before or after the strike lands?

Obviously the airships are cheap and totally worth losing them if it means we get to kill these Destroyers, but I'm just curious what kind of losses to anticipate.


Anyway, totally agreed on everything. One thing to keep in mind - with the pigs tile flipping back to REM next turn, we need to remember that his 3 Cavs can also hit the city in addition to the units on boats (don't think that's enough for this turn, though). Honestly, if he wants to spend his army on that, I'm fine with that... but I think he's definitely targeting core cities.

Our cannons from the west were headed towards Induction Coil, but I'm going to redirect them to the north. They can get up by Penicillin this turn, and from there they should be able to hit anything on the mainland if he decides to land us instead. And Textile Island should be safe too with the units ferrying in from Induction Coil.

[Mardoc]

So my understanding of airstrikes is still hazy because I've done about 10 of them ever. Because Destroyers have a 30% chance of intercepting, that means we should expect to lose quite a bit of our airships on the attack, right? And does that stack - if there's two Destroyers, does that mean a 60% chance of losing our airship (90% for 3, guaranteed past 3)? And finally - if an airship is intercepted, does it die before or after the strike lands?

Obviously the airships are cheap and totally worth losing them if it means we get to kill these Destroyers, but I'm just curious what kind of losses to anticipate.

This info comes from Civfanatics:

Only one unit gets the option to intercept, so it'll be a 30% chance if there is one destroyer or ten. If I'm reading it right, the intercepting unit gets max of five rounds to attempt to do damage, with up to %chance*50 HP damage per round - so airships can't die attacking destroyers if they start at full health (max of five rounds of 15 HP damage each). Mission only occurs if the attacker survives the interception. I think the effectiveness of an airstrike does go down with HP, so an intercepted airship will survive but not do very much.

[scooter]

So my understanding of airstrikes is still hazy because I've done about 10 of them ever. Because Destroyers have a 30% chance of intercepting, that means we should expect to lose quite a bit of our airships on the attack, right? And does that stack - if there's two Destroyers, does that mean a 60% chance of losing our airship (90% for 3, guaranteed past 3)? And finally - if an airship is intercepted, does it die before or after the strike lands?

Obviously the airships are cheap and totally worth losing them if it means we get to kill these Destroyers, but I'm just curious what kind of losses to anticipate.

This info comes from Civfanatics:

Only one unit gets the option to intercept, so it'll be a 30% chance if there is one destroyer or ten. If I'm reading it right, the intercepting unit gets max of five rounds to attempt to do damage, with up to %chance*50 HP damage per round - so airships can't die attacking destroyers if they start at full health (max of five rounds of 15 HP damage each). Mission only occurs if the attacker survives the interception. I think the effectiveness of an airstrike does go down with HP, so an intercepted airship will survive but not do very much.

Oh perfect, thanks.

[rho21]

How bad is the trade between undamaged destroyer and 20% damaged battleship? I haven't calculated, but my rule of thumb suggests it's roughly even, but getting worse for the destroyer the more promotions each side has. Let's hope it doesn't come to that anyway.

[scooter]

How bad is the trade between undamaged destroyer and 20% damaged battleship? I haven't calculated, but my rule of thumb suggests it's roughly even, but getting worse for the destroyer the more promotions each side has. Let's hope it doesn't come to that anyway.

Well just doing the basic math, a max-damaged Battleship will be at 32h vs a 30h Destroyer. Of course, if the Destroyer has coastal defense, it should come out ahead if neither are promoted. But yes, it gets worse quickly if the Battleship has promotions or defense bonus, not to mention the fact that you can't stack your Destroyers or else you'll get collateral'd.


This brings up my other thought - REM may actually retreat, hold, or wheel south when he gets a look at what we've got. He's in an awkward spot right now. He could afford to wait maybe 1-2 more turns to get more reinforcements, but he cannot afford to wait 3-4 more turns when Dreylin will likely join in on land. I expect Silkmoths to be pretty vulnerable if/when that happens, at which point I don't think he can afford to keep units on boats in our waters. When I play, I'll try to make sure we don't open up the south too much. He is very much in range of Photography right now, which would be a painful loss tactically speaking.

So I'm not quite sure what he'll do. The addition of even one battleship would sting a bit. 2 or 3 would hurt us pretty badly.

[Sullla]

Is REM actually in range of Photography though? I don't believe that he is, at least not this turn, although I don't have a picture of the whole northern sea in front of me right now. I think Photography is pretty safe for this turn, although next turn could be another story.

Now that said, I want to stress that Photography is critically important, probably the single most important city in this part of the world (strategically at least). If REM can capture Photography, he can sail right through the canal opened up into the western half of the ocean, and that's virtually a game over situation. We can never cover all of our threatened cities in our core. We absolutely must not lose Photography as a result. Places like Zipper, Antiseptic, and even Induction Coil are a lot less important.

Fortunately Photography is on a hill, which makes it significantly harder to attack. And I did suggest that we move most of our stack on the ships back by Induction Coil over to Photography to unload inside the city. We can then move them further north or always shuttle them back down to Induction Coil as needed. (And we should probably move our 2 infantry in pindicator's city back to Induction Coil for the time being.) Long story short, we should keep playing zone defense and stalling for time right now. That should work fine right up until REM shows up with battleships, and then... uhh...

Let's pray we get lucky and REM overcommits here against us. If we can sink some or all of that little fleet in the north, we should buy ourselves some more time, and where there's time, there's always hope.

EDIT: Also Dreylin has played his turn on Civstats, and we don't appear to have lost any cities, so it doesn't look like he attacked us. That's a small win at least. (Now watch scooter log in and Dreylin's at war with us, with a dozen units outside half our cities. Heh. Civstats can't see everything! But more likely, we are indeed safe... for now.)

[scooter]

Is REM actually in range of Photography though? I don't believe that he is, at least not this turn, although I don't have a picture of the whole northern sea in front of me right now. I think Photography is pretty safe for this turn, although next turn could be another story.

Oh, I think you're right. I thought I counted the other day that the Transport was 6 tiles from Photography, but by looking at past screenshots, it looks like it's actually 7 tiles away. So we should be good. Regardless, I'll make absolutely certain when I play the turn because yes, losing it would be very, very bad.

That should work fine right up until REM shows up with battleships, and then... uhh...

Let's pray we get lucky and REM overcommits here against us. If we can sink some or all of that little fleet in the north, we should buy ourselves some more time, and where there's time, there's always hope.

Yeah, I think we have to hope he continues his advance and we manage a big win somewhere. We can kill his Destroyers at a good exchange, and we can kill battleships at a decent exchange if we have enough numbers, but we almost certainly can't do both at the same time.

EDIT: Also Dreylin has played his turn on Civstats, and we don't appear to have lost any cities, so it doesn't look like he attacked us. That's a small win at least. (Now watch scooter log in and Dreylin's at war with us, with a dozen units outside half our cities. Heh. Civstats can't see everything! But more likely, we are indeed safe... for now.)

I was about to joke in-thread that we've got a 15% chance of a concession today, which I figured were roughly the chances Dreylin declares on us. Anyway, he also played the turn somewhat quickly (as much as you can anyway), which is only really possible if it's a peacetime turn for him. So I'm pretty certain we live to see another day.

[Elkad]

* 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.

The airship is produced and dumped in another city (closest I think). IIRC, it still has full movement immediately, despite rebaseing itself inbetween turns.

And don't forget you can base air units (and paratroopers) in forts to increase the concentration of them, or extend their range slightly.

[scooter]

Turn 332

I logged in to a request from BGN to gift him our spare incense. I thought about it for a minute or so, and decided to accept. If he's asking for it for free, it's probably for a good reason. It's a small price to pay to keep him in this war. Even if he doesn't do anything, 1) it forces REM to keep some units on that front and 2) it denies him a trade partner which he has basically none of right now. That seems worthwhile.

This turn took awhile, so I'll mostly just lay out the defenses. Two quick notes first.



Here's the spot REM razed from pindicator. Pindicator is down to 5 cities (these 4 and his starting capital just to the east). The western two are virtually undefended, but the other 3 are decently well-stocked. Certainly not enough to do anything with though other than turtle.



We did our first air strike! This was actually the only one of the turn, as I spent the rest of them rebasing. In retrospect, I think we could have eked out one more strike with an airship that didn't necessarily need to move. Anyway, it was a success with no interception.

I'm kinda thinking maybe we ought to not promote some of these airships, and then use the promotion when they get intercepted the first time so they don't have to burn a turn healing? I don't know how much promos affect damage done, and they definitely don't impact maximum damage... Anyway, let's survey the land defenses.



These two cities were my primary concern. I counted I think 9 airships of REM's that were in airstrike range of these two cities. Both could be hit by 5 units off his Transport. I thought Zipper could be hit by his 3 additional Cavs, but I realized the pig won't be lost until it's our turn again, so that was probably not a necessary concern. Anyway, I took one of the Galleons from Spinning Jenny and ferried in 3 units to help out here.



Neither city can be hit next turn, but I shuffled up some units from Photography. I moved two Galleons into Power Loom, that way we could ferry up to 6 units to the mainland next turn if necessary to stuff mainland cities. If the Transport survives, we can do more (more on that in a minute).



I dropped 6 units in here. I did confirm that the city isn't reachable by his Transport, so looking at it now, I should have left them on the boats. Anyway, we can move them up to the north end of the island next turn or simply reload some onto boats and drop them in Contact Process to cover that city. Actually... I'm gonna log back in and reload 3 of these Infantry onto one of the Galleons. I'll leave the other 5 assorted units just in case REM pulls off some crazy GG nonsense or something. That'll allow those 3 Infantry to cover SIX different cities next turn (not even counting inland cities that won't need defending). Pretty nice zone defense.

I also stationed another Induction Galleon 2N of the city. I left a couple more units in Induction, but from that tile we could move into Contact Process and unload them there if needed. Basically, I think we could survive a Transport fork if absolutely necessary. I'm growing more optimistic though that we won't have to.

Finally, the wounded Destroyer in here is staying put this turn along with the Medic3. It won't heal to 100%, but it'll heal significantly. We can decide next turn whether to move it, but hovering around 8h it was pretty useless.



Alright, I did an odd thing here, but I decided to use this Transport as bait. I'm kinda hoping he'll attack it for whatever reason. The Ironclad is placed here for the same reason, as is the SOTL which is in range if he kills one of the other boats first.

The rationale here is that he would win any of those easily, but those boats are strong enough to put a serious dent in his Destroyer, making a counter-attack with our own Destroyers an easy win. That said, he almost certainly won't take the bait. The secondary benefit of the Transport placement is we could add it to the defensive tile to the north if we decide to make a naval stand there. Finally, if it survives we can use it for ferrying units to the mainland or island if it's necessary.

Next turn alone we'll have 6 Destroyers in this region, and REM only has 5 of them visible. The following turn we'll add a couple more, and a couple more the turn after that. We're also pulling in as many outdated boats as possible to use as softeners. I honestly think he might retreat when he gets a look at what we've got.

[scooter]

Had a couple minutes to take a few quick screenshots.



REM retreated while adding a few Destroyers. At the very least he cooled on the idea of attacking our core which helps a great deal.



I've marked the range of his units. The northwest sign is his 9-move Destroyer range, the sign down by Photography is for both of his Transports. The Transport in Yaks appears to be new and has an extra movement. I'm not necessarily convinced all of the boats are full, though. I didn't see units disappear to account for the new Transport. Hard to guess, though.



REM shuffled his Cavs to this tile. It seems like he picked a spot that can set him up for either an attack on Zipper or an attack on pindicator. The latter seems more likely, but the location seems designed to keep us honest.

At the very least, I think we want a few more units on boats in/near Photography since the city itself is not in danger, but we could reinforce quite a few different locations from there. I think we also want to rebase a couple airships down around the Induction Coil area to get better visibility down there.

Any thoughts? I'll play this later tonight.