(July 13th, 2018, 13:37)Brian Shanahan Wrote: Thanks for taking the save Shallow Thought
No problem. Actually enjoyed this set more than I thought I might. I expect that there's plenty of sloppiness, but I'm afraid this situation is well beyond my abilities to be accurate. But I think I made progress. Certainly had fun.
T330: Well, as discussed, Gilgamesh has rifles - and cavs. He's also out-teching us (temporarily, I hope) while he's in a GA. So I reckon we may yet need infantry, and possibly artillery (although we're multiple techs away there). I look for cities that might sensibly do some wealth builds to help us get there in 3t. 2-3 core cities that are just starting builds switch to it. It might have been nice to look at upgrading more of our units, but that can wait until after AL.
I have a brief think about levees - SMB has at least 10 river tiles. But with 7t to build it, and it's not going to pay back in time. Same will probably be true of factories when we get there.
We have 57 workers and it's not enough. We need railroads everywhere! We also need to swap older units in as garrisons on the eastern former front and move our more modern units west. We'll lose ability to draft rifles soon, so I will try to do that along the frontiers for the next few turns. We're focusing espionage on Gilgamesh; I like that - we'll hopefully have graphs in a few turns. It's going to take me a while to gather our troops even vaguely sensibly. It's possibly that gathering them randomly and seeing how it goes will be the order of the day. Then, Final War
!
T331: I belatedly notice we still have a huge stack of Zulu units in the middle of our territory. It will be very interesting to see where they get teleported when I declare war. Possibly not in a good way.
T332: The major barriers we have are (a) how far away some of our units still are and (b) how badly organised they've become relative to where we want them now. We've got mixed mini-stacks of rifles, cannon and cav everywhere, some individuals have commando but they're not concentrated. This is entirely natural given the way that we've just fought Mansa on the far side of the world, but it's going to take a long time to sort out - given the broad front we're going to be fighting on and the uncertainty of where Shaka's army (actually two stacks) will actually be, it's probably not even worth trying to sort out fully. We'll just swamp the enemy with whatever we've got.
Even railroads are only a help, not an answer. Need magtubes!
Oh, we have a great scientist. He could actually usefully bulb us towards artillery, but I hold on for the moment.
T333: We have Assembly Line. Rome spits out our first infantry, upgraded in-queue. The core wealth cities switch to infantry. I take Scientific Method, on the way to Artillery (I guess we pick up airships en-route); will probably take that bulb next turn - nope, taking it now, as I don't know how bulb overflow works. Other than that, we're saving money this turn. Upgrading some of our highly promoted Samurai might be worth it...
High production cities will build Infantry, lower production ones cannon. Finishing what cavs are being built - and we may want some more for the speed.
Our railroads mean that one of Shaka's big stacks is now at our border with Gilgamesh. Solves the teleportation problem, but is not ideal.
After a pause, I decide to be slightly sneaky and declare war on Shaka before the others. The fact that we don't have a clear tech advantage over Gilgamesh changes things. Shaka having a stack that will be easy range of a good force of cannons and cavs is too big a chance to miss. Still intend to declare on Gilgamesh and Willem in a couple of turns, but let's clean up a bit first. I've got enough workers nearby to get railroads up to concentrate a force.
I get lucky with two 45% double-barrage cannon attacks, then unlucky with two 63% ones, then a few wins. I decide not to risk our city-raider cannon in the field at those sort of odds, so follow up with cavs. Part way through the stack we get another GG. I think that was 53 units killed for two cannon. Medieval with a few muskets, but that's still going to look good on the graphs. It's also a nice last hurrah for our horse archers and even a chariot (I wanted a 2-mover for the last kill), which get to play their part (EDIT: actually - see below for their final, glorious charge in a few turns). I kill one more roaming scout and we then have visibility on zero Zulu units.
I actually put a tick of spending into EP, to get graphs on Gilgamesh a turn early.
T334: Of course, Physics needs Astronomy, doesn't it
? We're further away than I thought, although Compass and Optics are cheap. I can see an argument for going Fascism, but I keep heading for Artillery. Slowly. I'm going to upgrade good city-raider samurai to infantry, and that will be expensive. Our economy is actually down at <40% break even, and that's with us still trading with Willem and Gilgamesh EDIT except we're in Mercantilism, so who cares
? We'll be able to wealth-build to cope, but still - ouch. When we move out and unit supply goes up...
I miscalculated somewhere - we still don't get graphs on Gilgamesh this turn. That was a waste. Oh well, we'll be healing for a turn anyway.
We don't need another GG at Cholo. Options are another medic - a third could be useful, or a military academy somewhere. Cholo does infantry at the rate of 5 every six turns any, but Advanced Wars and Can't Get Ye are options.
Gilgamesh's graphs are interesting (spoilered for size). He's matching us for GNP, close in Mfg, way behind in crop yield and has half our power. He now also has steel, but still lacks railroad and assembly. This is going to be more brutal than expected. His GA will be over soon, but he's used it to land Statue of Liberty in Uruk; sadly this is as far from our borders as it gets. He needs to die - one more turn while I heal.
I'm beginning to wonder if I should have been building factories after all. But I think we'll just overpower him soon enough.
The plan is for three stacks to move in next turn. The one at Bad-Tibra has a bit of a slog (not helped by losing a spy there just now), but we're getting a lot of units built in Roman lands. I think that's where the 3rd GG will go, to form a a third medic. These should be close enough to support each other if things go badly. There's also a sizeable force of mostly cavalry, with some cannon support, all the way across at Jurassic Park, but that will stand on the defensive initially - Gilgamesh seems to be concentrating his cavs at Shurupak. I'm drafting Shinobi now-and-again, but otherwise have been saving the draft since rifles went obsolete - drafting infantry can cover my defensive gaps for a little while.
T336: I lose another spy in a target city. Not getting lucky here, may have to kill these the hard way. Anyway:
Final War
!
In addition to the planned moves against Gilgamesh, some forces move against Willem. He's weak, and I'd rather have him on the defensive. Looking at the number of enemy cavs within two turns of both Jurassic park and - more importantly, our commercial monster of Advanced Wars - I draft three units in the are (not at AW itself). Two of those cities were either slowly starving or working spy specialists anyway.
T337: Willem attacks infantry with trebs, wellies and knights. He actually manages to redline some of the supporting rifles
. Promo-healing and a city revolt nearly gets us Leeuwarden, but I'm one hitter short.
Gilga's cavalary move SE towards my attacks. That's not ideal - I'd rather have had them move N into our territory. I opt to press at Shurupak myself, although keeping the force mobile on our side of the border might have been safer. If he goes for Inca Gold I might be a bit short.
Larak falls easily. I lose one cannon - those protective rifles are tough cookies in hill cities, and I take it rather than burn it. Even with things going smoothly, these turns are a time-sink. I'm going to head towards domination. Adab has more defenders, but dies just as quickly. That's a decent number of cats that will never get to be cannon
.
T338. Gilgamesh's counters at Adab, but only with a handful of cavalry - his main stack will arrive next turn. He doesn't have a lot of collateral, so defense should be able to hold. 17 cav, 10 knights, 4 wellies, 3 rifles. I could sacrifice a unit or two and pillage a road to prevent any one-mover hits - and do so. Two HA's and a chariot pillage their way through a hamlet, a cottage and a road to limit access to Adab. If we need more sentries we can 1t them somewhere.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure that the big stack will try to re-take Adab, but the cav could hit Duckhunt, so draft there and move in some reinforcements. Can 17 cav and 10 knights get through three infantry, three rifles and some trash behind 60% defenses? Perhaps, but it would be very painful for them. I can scrape up a couple more cavalry as well. And draft Gauntlet for one more infantry. That'll do. Can't get Ye is covered adequately just by forces passing through - I'm also trying to build up a commando stack there, because I'm making no use of that promo so far.
Leeuwarden burns. It has no food.
T339: Gilgamesh picks off a lone infantry I'd used to kill a roaming cav - he gets lucky with a retreat and wears our guy down. I should be more careful. He kills our ancient/classical pillagers, and suicides a couple more cav against Adab, but the bit stack halts outside city - in range of my barrage cannon sub-stack. I lose all of 5 them at better than 30% odds. That's .7^5, or 15%. Not too unreasonable. Still, this is what they were for. I hold back with the city-killer cannon, and unleash the infantry and cavs. I lose 4 cav, but the stack is wiped. 9 units for 17 cav, 10 knights and assorted? Not ideal, but I think that's the Sumerian mobile force gone.
At Bad-Tibra I rush things, not helped by a city-revolt mission failing. Lose a few cannon, but here our stack is infantry heavy. That just cuts through rifles once I get my head up.
I decide not to attack at Shurupak. I've only got two cannon there and barely enough hitters, and they are mostly cav - even with a city revolt that won't work. I need more cannon and infantry there. I promote the cannon CR1-Accuracy and start taking down the defenses the slow way. I've made a defensive error on the old Roman border - Mediolanum is technically at risk if Sumeria does pull a couple of 2-movers out of somewhere. Draft. Fixed.
T340: Not a lot in the interturn. We did lose a mine to an infiltrator, I think at Osaka (not a resource mine if I'm right).
We have an enemy knight worker-hunting near Can't get Ye (somehow, I didn't manage to leave any in range to be captured - maybe I
am slowly improving at this game
). There is also a knight at Mediolanum, justifying my belated draft.
I've been gathering commandos at a rally point near Can't get Ye. Hopefully the next player can actually make use of them.
We're 9t from Artillery at break-even, but do have about a third-of the necessary cash in the bank at 100%, so should be able to do better than that. Unless the next player wants Fascism instead.
I have built zero infrastructure, as I didn't think the payoff was worth it.
We've five main stacks - Shurupak (yet to be captured), Adab, Larak and Bad-Tibra from W to E along Sumerian border, with another NW of Ecco heading for Kampen. Cannon suffer against Gilgamesh's rifles, but infantry have quite an edge once the defenses are down. Gilgamesh does have cannon, but not (yet) in any quantity.
Shaka has a stack near the Sumerian city of Larsa, but it's not scary.
Gilgamesh is still competitive in GNP, but his Mfg has plummeted. Not sure why. However, the important demo is this one.
Not sure about turn order - IIRC it looks like this:
shallow_thought (just played)
Brian (if Brian and I just swapped rather than a full skip)
Zalson
RFS-81
haphazard1 (if he's still skipping)
So, that's either Brian or Zalson up.
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
We just have to keep slogging through the enemy until we reach victory. With this big of an all-land map that is quite a struggle, but we will get there. 