[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution

[Sullla]

I think we might be able to kill that whole naval stack, or at least a good chunk of it... Only one of the destroyers has any Combat promotions, and we get the chance to hit with first airstrikes. Going to log into the game shortly and see how many destroyers we have in range.

[scooter]

I think we might be able to kill that whole naval stack, or at least a good chunk of it... Only one of the destroyers has any Combat promotions, and we get the chance to hit with first airstrikes. Going to log into the game shortly and see how many destroyers we have in range.

Not quite. So we have 9 airships in range of that stack with movement points remaining (2 did scouting missions first).

Unfortunately, only 4 of our Destroyers can hit this stack. The new Destroyers in Haber and coming through Pencillin are just short. We do have a 5th Destroyer technically in range in Photography, but it's not fully healed (21.8h), and it would have to attack from the east where it would definitely get cleaned up the following turn.

The problem I see is that even if we manage to kill a few of his boats, we would very likely lose almost all of ours on his turn.

[scooter]

Turn 336

We took a look at it, and attacking REM's stack wasn't really feasible. The issue is that while we could in fact attack his boats, we couldn't do so without 1) promoting a bunch of boats to Nav1 hampering their effectiveness and greatly hurting their odds and 2) exposing our Destroyers to an equally devastating counter-attack. So we settled for a bunch of air strikes. I'll do a run-down of how I decided to set up our defense for this turn.



I stuck the bulk of our Destroyers on this tile (+1 in city). This will let them hit literally every single water tile on this body of water that you can see in this screenshot. REM's only choice should be to reinforce heavily or retreat into his city to heal. If he decides to whip back around and attack at our core again, he can do that, but it'll cost him some Destroyers.

Ninja-edit: I noticed while typing this up that I miscounted the tiles for his possible airship strikes - they can actually hit this staging tile. However, they cannot hit the tile 1SW of it, and that tile is still plenty good enough for defensive purposes. So I logged back in and retreated the Jenny Destroyer as well as 4 of the other Destroyers back to that tile. There is one Destroyer that was out of movement points so it can be shelled if they want, but it can at least recover some of that with promotions. Minor mistake, but not too bad.



To control for the fact that he can still land next to Zipper/Antiseptic, I've placed these boats here. From Penicillin they can take rails into Zipper and even attack out of it in addition to the 15-ish units in those two cities. The Transport sitting inside Spinning Jenny could also be used to ferry into Zipper if the waterway isn't blocked. I think we've got enough options to keep the north safe.



I did make an annoying mistake this turn. Halfway through the turn I noticed I somehow moved our wounded Destroyer onto the coastline. No clue at all how or even when that happened. Anyway, that means he won't complete healing this turn like I hoped, so that'll be delayed one more turn.



These 6 units are primarily to defend Photography/Induction/Pindicator as needed, but they can also get to Contact Process (and up to Penicillin via rails) if REM decides to turn around and come back at our west after all. The third Galleon is empty, but REM doesn't need to know that. The doubt of how many units he'll get slammed with if he moves on pindicator will hopefully keep him from doing so.



Another empty boat here. We're hyper paranoid about REM taking Photography which is an underwhelming city with extremely high tactical value, so I've been keeping slightly bigger than necessary garrisons for fear of GG tricks. Anyway, the short of it is that it's another boat that might be full in REM's mind to defend pindicator.

I should also note that I did rebase a couple airships into that pindicator city. If he moves tanks in, we'll badly need to airstrike them a couple times this side of Panzers. If we're able to do that, I have high hopes we might be able to wipe a stack or something.



One final note. Mostly a note to self. I brought the MG over to this front. If we stick a rail on the corn tile, it'll have enough moves (with 0 to spare) to slip into Borodin next turn if needed. MGs have less value in coastal cities in the age of marines, but for inland cities they're still very useful. Anyway, whether we actually move it in here is a question for another turn, but I just wanted to make it clear I've set things up to have the option.

I didn't take any overview/demo/city shots because figuring out the positioning took up all of my time. Now I press enter and hope there weren't any holes.

One final note: this map rules. The tactical puzzles here are very complex.

[BRickAstley]

One final note: this map rules. The tactical puzzles here are very complex.

[Sullla]

Yeah, scooter and I both love the map and scenario design for this Pitboss. It's been a wonderful game to play, and hopefully to watch.

We had the chance to discuss the turn over Gchat, so I don't have anything else to add right now. Scooter has been doing a great job of playing zone defense here.

[Athmos]

Oh, it's definitely been a wonderful game to watch ! I'm still unspoiled and eager to see how it will continue to unfold :-)

[scooter]

REM rolled the turn, and I was near my computer. I took a look.



Closed of course, and I see no reason to re-offer any variation of it. Doing so would blow up any semblance of a dopile which we badly need. He did one air strike on a single Destroyer, and beyond that he backed off us completely.



And onto pindicator. I neglected to get a shot of the defenses of Borodin, but it's not a lot.

Only two of our airships are in range of air striking this naval stack (Jenny is one tile too far away).

I logged back in to get a shot of pindicator's defenses, but then realized he was mid-turn. I did catch this though with my explorer.



Pindicator responded to it by withdrawing from his capital. After taking this shot he then also mostly emptied out of Cui into Bordin which is now stacked to the gills with units.

I'll take another look later when he's completed his turn, but it looks like he's setting up to take a big swing into REM next turn because why not when you're sitting on cannons. I think we ought to be around to capitalize on that.

Finally... If pindicator is going to fall, we ought to consider nabbing his western two cities for ourselves while they're practically empty. Just to put all options on the table. The problem with doing that is pindicator's culture is an ideal buffer against the tanks we aren't quite ready to deal with yet.

Alright. You know the drill - fire away. I need to think about this a bit more myself. I will likely wait until tomorrow night to play to give more time to think it over. This turn is massively important.

[scooter]

Updated to show the map after pindicator moved.

[scooter]

A few more noodlings on the turn.



First, because we have to start considering this now. I don't know how many turns pindicator has left to live, but want to think a couple turns down the road on sniping these cities. I think we're at least 2T away from that, but we ought to start ending turns with a Galleon or two in place to take these when the time comes. In the meantime...



Here's this turn's tactical puzzle. REM has a pair of 10-move Destroyers, and they can reach all the way to the marked signs to the west. One of the two Transports can get to the red tile (boating Induction), and both of them can boat pindicator's city here. I think his goal is to try to raze that pindicator city, denying us a large city and temporarily cutting off a reinforcement route. I think we ought to defend try to it for now. I guess it really depends on how many Marines he's got on board.

I think our boats ought to go on the yellow tile. We can get around 7 Destroyers (plus assorted wooden ships) to that tile, and REM cannot bombard it. Given most of his boats are shot-up and no battleships can get to that tile, I think it's a no-brainer. He won't be able to get odds on the tile.

As for the pindicator city, we can get around 10 units in it pretty easily without jeopardizing our other defenses too much. They'll have a nice dual purpose in being able to threaten REM's land stacks via rails. I think we should position airships to guarantee that if he comes up, bombards, and attacks it, his ships would not be able survive the following turn.

I think the north we should mostly leave alone. When Dreylin joins in a few turns, I expect him to rush a couple of those (formerly Gaspar and Dreylin) REM cities, and I don't think REM will be able to hold them. We can shuffle a few units from up there onto Textile Island which will afford us more units on the southern mainland. Best strategy seems to be to let Dreylin attack up there while we do our thing down here.

The only possible downside of this plan is that sticking all our ships on the yellow dot potentially lets REM swing his ships back north and target that area again. I'm less afraid of that now, though. Plus with all our avenues of attack + airships, those ships would sitting ducks. I doubt he does that. More likely he sits and heals for a turn while letting his battleships catch up and join the fray.


One final final thing. Let's say we survive these next few turns intact and Dreylin does pile on. REM could definitely start to collapse pretty quickly if that happens. Keep in mind that BGN's army is equal to ours in size, and he is at war with REM too. One thing we need to be cautious of is that Dreylin is still playing to win here. He's got no incentive to attack us right now, but that changes the minute REM's lead appears to be toppled. When we dogpiled Dreylin, our best move was probably "selling out" REM and ditching the war early. The first team to bail on the war has the best leverage. If Dreylin snags a couple REM cities, I could see him doing the same, and then slipping the knife in our back if we wrestle the lead from REM. Just throwing that out there as something to be wary of. I think the short of it is we need to improve our Dreylin-side defenses over the next half-dozen turns. At the very least, we need a few airships dedicated to watching Dreylin.

[Sullla]

Agree that this turn is a major one, as are all of the turns at this point. I was able to spend some time this morning looking at the game, as my train fortunately had wifi on board. Now here's the minor downside: I'm on a cheap tablet laptop, and this thing is not exactly precise, much less so from a moving train. I spend all of time in-game with the mouse clicked on an airship that's already used its movement points for the turn, as there's almost nothing that can go wrong with that unit highlighted. And yet, before I could even scroll over there, the machine gun we had moving over to Induction Coil started out highlighted, and it jumped of its own accord off the rails into a useless position. I hate it when stuff like that happens. So we have one unit out of position, even though managed to get through the rest of the turn without further mishaps.

I went ahead and used the other airship we have based in pindicator's city for a recon mission. I thought we needed to know what the situation was to the south before moving any units this turn. Here's what I saw:



So there is nothing immediately threatening Balakirev, although there may be in a few turns. All of the REM cities on this island are completely empty; I wonder if Dreylin is seeing this with his airships and licking his chops. Anyway, sorry to use the airship without consulting, but I felt that we needed this information and my Civ availability isn't great at the moment.

I agree with the basic premise for this turn: move our destroyers to the narrow one-tile chokepoint between Induction Coil and Photography. For our land units, we want to defend two cities heavily: Photography and pindicator's city of Kabalevsky. Those are the ones that can be attacked, as Induction Coil is blocked by our destroyers and the other cities on Textile Island should be safe for the moment. I agree with ferrying a couple units (but not all) from the northern cities over to Textile Island. Probably leave Zipper along and shuffle a few infantry from Antiseptic, which should be safe for at least this turn.

Now, as for airships and naval ship positioning:



Any land units beyond what we feel we need for defense should go on this tile. Note that it allows us to reinforce Induction Coil, Photography, or attack both of pindicator's two cities. Depending on how things play out, I think we need to be prepared to attack pindicator's cities and capture them ourselves as early as next turn. That might not be necessary, but if it is, then we'll be ready. I think Kabalevsky will be pretty easy to take and hold, since our culture mostly surrounds it already. Balakirev would be trickier, mostly because that REM force which is near pindicator's capital will likely be heading in this direction next . Maybe Dreylin and BGN will be enough to distract REM from coming over here though, we'll see. At least we want to be prepared ahead of time if possible.

I don't think REM will try to come towards us this turn with his ships. If he moves those injured destroyers anywhere near us, they're all going to get sunk with ease. And we have even more destroyers coming out every turn.



I think we want 1-2 airships in Aspirin here. For starters, it would let us keep an eye on those REM cities currently being choked by Donovan's culture and see if there are any opportunities there. Perhaps more importantly, it would let us also watch what Donovan is up to. I'm slightly worried that Donovan may try to reclaim his city at some point while we're busy elsewhere. I'm always concerned about defending cities that don't control their own first ring of tiles. We would not have a chance to reinforce if he attacked here. Perhaps another infantry or two could slide over here from Radio or somewhere else? At the very least, let get an airship over here and see what Donovan has available.



We also want 2-3 airships in Barbed Wire to watch Dreylin and maybe spot an attack incoming ahead of time. Dreylin still has a bunch of cavs in Ducks and Geese, which are presumably playing zone defense since he only just discovered Railroad this turn and his unit mobility has been limited up to this point. More vision down here would certainly be helpful. (Dreylin's Golden Age is going to result in him being caught up on tech again. With Taj Mahal included, he's going to have 24 turns of Golden Age compared to our 8 turns. At least this third Golden Age is almost done... and we still have the potential for one last two GPP Golden Age yet to come.)

A few more smaller notes:

* Let's move our ships away from the tile SW of Spinning Jenny so that they don't get air striked needlessly.

* The fort tile that we just completed between Spinning Jenny and Photography is a very strong tactical position. Airships located there can hit REM ships almost anywhere in the eastern sea. I think we should rebase the maximum 4 airships there if at all possible.

* Hydraulic Ram should get its tiles back from Dreylin's culture next turn, we just need one more turn of Build Culture to hit 100 and ensure that we control the second ring.

* Electricity tech finishes this turn, and it will be interesting to see how much of a difference that makes in terms of our economy. I think Industrialism will be 4 more turns after that. Here are the Demos:



Not bad, especially with Dreylin and BGN in Golden Ages. We still have a chance to win if we can fight these wars tactically and navigate through the web of tangled diplomacy. Scooter, I'll check this game again tonight to see if you have other thoughts. Good luck.