[Spoiler] PB42: Rusten and mackoti play Krill playing Bismarck of Portugal

[Krill]

Turn 185




OH runs away, and starts to reposition to defend against an attack. At this point I'm not interested in spending the time doing that, but if I were playing this as aggressively as I could in search of a win, I'd want to get a naval advantage, and that means frigates, SoL, drydocks and cannon. So peace is not an unreasonable move IMO. That means de-escalation, which I've been trying for the past 25 turns.





Nothing here...





Running units over to the far flung captured outlying cities.





Lewwyn resetting his defense.





OH reshuffling his defense.





OH being a sneaky bastard, but I can get frigates in position to deal with them without too much difficulty.





Privateers are interesting due to sentry. Once the issue of them being usable and killable in enforced peace is dealt with they will be much easier to use though.

[Krill]

Turn 186




OH is positioning his frigates behind the island cities, not approachable, but he also can't do much damage back there. Peace ends eot188 so T189 war can be declared. I'm preparing to stop him getting units past the island, but I can't stop him moving up, bombarding culture and attacking the island front city, so Castles, to force the frigates to bombard, and muskets in place to hold are order of the day. Then I need enough units to clear out everything if he goes for the island, specifically the frigates. If he were to commit everything to such an attack, then I would likely find it much easier to then take all the islands from him, and potentially have an island hopping campaign. But he has no reason to go for the island, there isn't anything there except hammer production.





OH has pulled his squadron back, but I still need to keep units around Mediolanum, the Roman front island city that guards the pass into the northern ocean.





More units being rejigged.





The offer to OH. None of the pictures show it, but OH signed peace with Lewwyn, and now this is the first step in the de-escalation process. Next step is up to OH.

[Krill]

Turns 187 and 188.

After some wonderful nightshifts, and I'm zoned out of my head, I initially declined an OB offer, and then resent it on T187.




So here's the issue: I played a double turn. I retreated everything from this area, but left all of the units within reach of the frigate stack (my units only moved 4 tiles on T187 and then remained in place on T188). I split my privateer and frigates to have half the stack cover the norther pass around to Sweet Lorraine, and the other half of the stack to cover the route towards Stormy Weather. Neither stack could immediately attack the frigates on T189, when war could be declared, but on the following turns would be able to attack whatever was remaining of OH's frigates, if he used to OB to run after the privateers. By playing the double turn, I stopped OH from being able to declare war in the first half of T189 though, although he could play T189 before me if he was not declaring war.

Is this wrong? Interestingly, as I am not planning to declare war, nor are there any settler races ongoing, the only advantage I think I gain is a diplomatic one: OH can deduce from the units positions on T188, when he plays, that I am not intending to invade. This does not stop him invading though, but does give him the option to explore other strategies other than ones involving strict warfare. To be clear: I don't think I broke any rules here.

[Krill]

There aren't any pictures from T189, because, well, nothing's happened.

Oh didn't declare war, he retreated his frigate stack, he has one frigate poking around my back lines and he hasn't brought forward any galleons. So I'm going to finish up a round of frigates, then build a couple of galleons and go start razing superjms core cities. It feels like overkill, but what are you going to do when someone is due to finish Rep Parts eot190 and is one tech from Cav, but lacks Astronomy, Chemistry and Mil Sci (and I will get to Mil Sci before he gets to Rifling)? It's the exact same plan OH had to deal with me, the difference being, superjm has no power and a worse production base.

[Krill]

An update: Gav has rifles, a turn before superjm, superdeath lost 1 city then broke Cairos stack, and nothing has changed regarding Gav winning this game. I still have vision and navy in place to deal with superjm, he is still essentially down Astro whilst I'm pumping out SoL now (already have enough frigates in theatre to deal with any attack anyway, but SoL are to deal with OH attempting to invade Lewwyn again).

[Krill]

Can we please end this game now that superjm just lost all of his units?

[Krill]

If this game is carrying on I'm going to push out 20 galleons and go hit Lewwyn.

If this game is carrying on and OH hits Lewwyn I hit OH.

I'm not competing with Gav anymore, not even close, he has rifles but no Chem, but that's still a massive beakers lead and he has 3 times the cottages I do. OH lacks a cottage base, and still has to worry about me.

Gav has 2 options, he either goes and wrecks superjm, or he goes and wrecks Cairo. Either works, but in both cases he is looking at splitting the conquest with either OH or me (in my case, I actually can't contest any of it, so it all goes to Gav, Mids, Confucian shriner, everything).

I honestly think that playing on has gone from a reasonable option (Gav could have fucked up the defence against superjm, so the game should have carried on) to a farce at this point: OH can win, but only if Gav attacks Cairo, fucks up, and then OH takes everything and I choose to not pressure OH in any way. If Gav doesn't attack Cairo, and instead attacks superjm, game is over no matter what, he will have double second place's land. If OPH wants to concede then game should be called.

[Krill]

I'm sorry superjm

I didn't want to raze your stuff, but it was that or Gav gets it, and if I am trying to play this game properly, I have to raze that which I can't keep.

[Krill]

Gav is on his march towards OH now, just going to mow his way through Cairo, only stopping to heal and consolidate forces, and then he will push into OH's core.

20 turns max IMO, until concession. Gav is preparing to tech Steam Power and he has Corp, so he must be planning to get to infantry for that invasion. OH is a couple of turns from Rifling.

I'm about 4 turns from an 80% chance of a fourth GA, not that it matters.

[Krill]

And...OH declares war on Gav.

And I'm still second in power.

Thinking this through, even if Gav makes a mistake (unless he loses his army at sea due to an unseen strike from circumnavigation boats which would count as a double blunder anyway) I reckon he has to make at least two major blunders before OH is even with him.

And my tech is ridiculously awful.