It's Clobberin' Time! Raging Barbs Highlands Tokugawa on Monarch

[Zalson]

I fell asleep last night after putting my children to bed... so I should be well-rested to attempt the overview today.

My goal is provide an overview our cities -- which is a lot -- and prescribe what I think they should be doing for the rest of the game. This will give the lurker(s?) some fodder and some content. I'll also try to point out any mistakes that we made in terms of city optimization and builds.

Then I will stare at the game for some time trying to understand the optimal paths toward victory.

I know I'm going to want combustion + flight. I may swap into uni suffrage and communism at some point, so we can plant airbases at the front and also start airlifting units from the backlines. Fascism for paratroopers might be nice, too.

[Brian Shanahan]

Even with our production edge, we're still close to tech parity with Gilgamesh - slogging through his heartland was always going to be tough. I don't know if Brian was able to make use of our commando units, but we didn't have that many. So yes, progress, measured in kilo-buckets of blood .

Good luck Zalson.

Some. We don't have enough to take core cities, but stragglers would fall to them.

Thinking about it, I should've sent them against the Dutch. They'd have taken cities off Willem with his medieval units.

[Zalson]

Okay an overview isn't going to happen. We have 59 cities. But I'll still manage the best I can.

First things first: wake all the units!



Okay, maybe not all of them.

First thing I do is go through all our cities. I start levees where they'll be advantageous (or where I just can't stand not having one, like Streets of Rage or Rome). We won't build factories. We have 100 infantry. We'll be fine.



Attacking outside of Leiden.



Well that is a decent stack. I'm going to lose a commando unit to it, unfortunately... (we have more commandos -- we may just survive!)

At this point I realize that we have been, perhaps, a bit to cautious. Especially when the power graph looks like this.



T0: took Uruk, Leiden, Marad

After taking Uruk, I went through and reconfigured our specialists. Again.

T351
Lose 3 workers and a Cav on the interturn. oh well.

We have so many potential commando units. About 1/2 of them were in the south and were missing promotions. I have made them infantry.

And that's where I stop. An hour and half to play a turn and a half. This one will go quicker.

AIR POWER is the name of the game. Instead of arty, we should have gone combustion/flight. I may try to do that at some point in the future.

Also: Mount Rushmore.

[haphazard1]

Artillery is pretty useful. Air power can be as well, but sizable numbers of artillery can be amazing.

As of tomorrow evening my move should be complete. The unpacking will go on for quite some time, especially getting the library back out of boxes and on shelves. But I should be available to play again.

[Zalson]

T351 continued

Gronigen falls. I was going to raze it because it's a terrible spot but it has a lot of buildings. So I'll keep it!



Not a lot of options in the south because of Gilgamesh's tech, but Commandos sure are useful. And gilgy is kind enough to have railroads!



T352
Great Prophet out of advanced wars. Next up is a great person out of advanced wars in 8 turns. So got to get fascism by then. I want to get it earlier; going to chop out mount rushmore at Taodeni.

City revolt goes through at Eridu and we've got commandos in the area. Goodbyeeee.

Burn Hoorn because it has no buildings survive capture. Allocated too much force toward it.

Take Larsa, then stupidly burn commandos trying to take Zimbir after putting it in revolt. dummy. Should have moved cavs up to take it next turn. Oh well.

T354
More stupidiy at Zimbir. I keep on moving and then attacking instead of attacking first and assessing. Burning a lot of units there.

Take Enkhuizen. Take Middleburg. Take Nina.

T355
FINALLY Take Zimbir and with it the MoM. Unfortunately, i don't think I can get a great person anytime soon.

Pictures come soon. Our war weariness is so bad, we're taking 60% culture tax: and we're still unhappy.

EDIT: apparently I felt the need to screenshot Eridu?



and here's what the world looks like now:

[shallow_thought]

Pictures come soon. Our war weariness is so bad, we're taking 60% culture tax: and we're still unhappy.

Wow. And that's with jails, nationhood barracks happiness and theatres everywhere, I assume. Yep, fascim ASAP. Is it worth considering coliseums?

[haphazard1]

Sounds like some good progress, Zalson. Ouchie on the war weariness. But we have to keep slogging through the enemy.

[Zalson]

I think all cities over size 15 have at least 1 unhappy face from war weariness. There's a size 15 gilgamesh city that just came out of resistance that cannot work a single tile. I think it has 47 unhappy faces. I'll take a screenshot.

[haphazard1]

47? I have seen some really unhappy cities, but that is pretty impressive.

I would guess it is mostly "yearn to join the motherland" unhappiness in that city, along with war weariness. Cases like that are one reason to continue running slavery into the late game, so you can whip-whip-whip to get rid of population that otherwise would starve to death. Emancipation unhappiness becomes pretty minor compared to the other sources of unhappiness with extended war.

[shallow_thought]

47? I have seen some really unhappy cities, but that is pretty impressive.

I would guess it is mostly "yearn to join the motherland" unhappiness in that city, along with war weariness. Cases like that are one reason to continue running slavery into the late game, so you can whip-whip-whip to get rid of population that otherwise would starve to death. Emancipation unhappiness becomes pretty minor compared to the other sources of unhappiness with extended war.

Yep; that's something I'm going to chalk up as a lesson learned. Emancipation anger bad, but in a game with so much death, it's a blip. Would not have left us stuck there if I'd realised it was going to get quite like this.