[Spoilers] Boldly Going Nowhere and Mr. Cairo go to Florida. Hilarity Ensues.

[Mr. Cairo]

What does your timeline look like?

Too long. JR4 moved his army up to my border, so I'm going to try and bribe him off. Hopefully he continues to act the way he did when the dogpile on wetbandit was building up, and stays out of this one too and bribes have worked before this game. If that's successful, then I'll start putting my cities on Wealth builds, continue upgrading for a few more turns, and then turn on the culture slider. If it's not successful, and wetbandit attacks as well... I'll just have to hope in the power of collateral damage. I'm also going to try and gain control of the eastern sea, SD still has a lot of battleships, but if I can force him to keep them in his city for fear of Airship attack, then I'll feel a lot safer. I think next turn as well, I'm going to start counting how many Transports he has and keep just enough units in the two coastal cities he can hit to prevent him from taking them (ie: 1 more than the most he can transport). Right now it's a bit overkill there.

[Mr. Cairo]

I hate this game right now. Losing 2 70% battles in a row is tough, especially when they were Tanks



but to then lost a third Tank despite have 95% odds?



I don't know what SD was planning moving that stack forward, since he should have realised it was going to die, but maybe it was just to encourage JR4 to attack? There's a few injured Tanks in the city if that's enough to encourage JR4, but with the amount of Tanks he's got JR4 could have overrun this city for a while now. I suppose I could have waited and hit that stack with more Airships next turn, but I really didn't want to let SD bombard the defenses down at all. I got a GG out of it, so that's nice, I put him on a Warrior for the free upgrade and sprinkled some XP on a few tanks.

edit: this is happening up by my border with JR4, which is also my land border with SD, although it's only a few tiles.

[Mr. Cairo]

Well, I can guess what all the flurry of activity in SD's thread was about, he attacked me on the western coast, where I was not expecting it because he only had 5 transports, and to naval invade in this era without bombers or even airships requires close to 2:1 odds. I had 17 defenders vs 19 attackers (I don't know if he only brought 19 or didn't bother with the last one, he really should have stopped long before 19 though, but I'll get to that later), and he won 6 battles and lost 13:




After my rng pain last turn I thought I'd go through the combat log and write down the odds of all the battles, although sometimes it's really confusing. Look at this:

The Tank and MG apparently had pretty close modified strengths, but the Tank had worse odds than the Marine against my Infantry despite my Infantry having a much higher modified strength than the Marine. Or am I reading it wrong?

Anyway, this is what went down (The combat log shows the odds from the attacker's perspective, so that's how I recorded it, from SD's perspective):
T v AT, 21%, SD L
T v AT, 28%, SD L
T v MG, 22%, W
M v I, 28%, L
M v I, 28%, L
M v I, 25%, L
T v I, 66%, L (At this point he didn't have enough units to take the city even if he won every battle afterwards, so he should have only continued if he was getting really good odds)
T v MG, 58%, W
T v MG, 58%, W
T v MG, 58%, W
T v MG, 58%, L
T v MG, 58%, W
T v MG, 22%, L
T v I, 24%, L
T v I, 40%, W
T v MG, 72%, L
M v I, 29%, L
I v I, 12%, L
I v I, 24%, L

I highlighted the wins/losses that went "against the odds"
So he won 2 battles he should have lost, lost 3 battles he should have won, although the 58% loss is close enough to 50/50 that it barely counts.

I honestly don't know what he was thinking here, I have railroads and a LOT of units (still number 1 power by quite a lot, especially after this turn), so if he couldn't burn the city in the first attack, there's no point, and he needed a lot more than 20 units.

Afterwards I was able to kill off one of two stacks of naval units, with 3 Transports, 2 BBs, and some Ironclads in it, losing 1 Destroyer (and leaving some Ironclads out to be attacked if he wants to, I don't really care about them atm).

The units I've selected are the ones I moved into Sparta this turn, and I moved one of my GG medics up behind the city to heal faster. Once everyone's healed, I can make the garrisons a little smaller, at least until he gets more Transports into the area.

Here's the situation on the Eastern coast:

I'm continuing to air strike the naval units sitting outside his city: his destroyers get some intercepts, but since each destroyer can only intercept once a turn and I have a lot of Airships, it's not making that much of a difference, so I'm keeping a fair few of his units hurt there. Also, his Transports in that lake can't reach Talibangelical so I moved some defenders out of there into Vanillaisis.

I also decided to build a round of units everywhere to make up for recent losses. Maybe that's not a good idea, but JR4 is about to get Flight, I can't remember if he has Radio already, but if he does, the bombers are incoming and that's very worrying. I'd have to plan on a first strike in that case, returning to my earlier plan to burn Lords from the sea.

[naufragar]

The Tank and MG apparently had pretty close modified strengths, but the Tank had worse odds than the Marine against my Infantry despite my Infantry having a much higher modified strength than the Marine. Or am I reading it wrong?

That's confusing. My only guess is that first strikes don't show up in the odds on the combat log but are calculated in the percentage. No idea.

[Mr. Cairo]

I lost some ships I shouldn't have, but I've finally cleared up the western sea. There's 2 transports left in SD's city, but once my destroyers are healed and that BB is built I'll be able to blockade his cities.

Here are the unfortunate losses:

There were three BBs there, all already injured. I half-expected to lose my BB, but I didn't think I'd then lose any Destroyers cleaning up.

JR4 is building Transports and Battleships on his northern coast, on the sea he shares with DZ. If he attacks DZ I think I'll have this. Which is ridiculous, because between them JR4 and wetbandit have 136 Tanks. If they both attacked I'd probably have to pull everything back to my three culture cities, and even then it'd be dicey. Wetbandit especially, since he has all those MGs to defend agasint the collateral. But JR4 appears to be planning to attack DZ, and wetbandit took less than 10 minutes to play his most recent turn.
Which still leaves only SD. I have to assume that all the Transports he has facing my eastern coast are full, so probably that's most of his offensive army there, so I can easily defend against that as long as it's sitting there just by having enough units in my city.

I think I might actually pull this off.

edit: JR4 doesn't have Radio, so no Bombers yet.

[Old Harry]

The Tank and MG apparently had pretty close modified strengths, but the Tank had worse odds than the Marine against my Infantry despite my Infantry having a much higher modified strength than the Marine. Or am I reading it wrong?

That's confusing. My only guess is that first strikes don't show up in the odds on the combat log but are calculated in the percentage. No idea.

I'm fairly sure you are right.

[DaveV]

Here's my theory from an EitB PBEM. Bottom line: if units are damaged, modified strength isn't a very good indicator of combat odds, because a damaged unit can be killed with fewer hits. It's not clear from your log whether the infantry attacked by the marine was already damaged; if so, that could easily result in better odds despite a worse ratio of modified strength.

[Mr. Cairo]

Here's my theory from an EitB PBEM. Bottom line: if units are damaged, modified strength isn't a very good indicator of combat odds, because a damaged unit can be killed with fewer hits. It's not clear from your log whether the infantry attacked by the marine was already damaged; if so, that could easily result in better odds despite a worse ratio of modified strength.

If units are damaged it shows their HP in the combat log, as far as I remember.


Updated timeline: 6 to 8 turns, if I get another great artist, which I hope to secure in 5 to 6 turns. It's currently at 69% odds, but that will improve. At some point soon I'll max out on artists and just starve the city down until the great person arrives. If it's an artist, then it should be enough by that point, if not, then I'll need more time, and have to use the slider a lot more.

[Mr. Cairo]

More info with screenshots:

Here's my best culture city, and where I hope to get the great artist:



I already have 2 Great Artists, I hope to use one here:

I think within around 8 turns it'll be at 46000 culture, so 1 artist will make it Legendary. If I turn on the slider and max out artists some time before that it could be less than 8 turns.

That will leave me two artists for my cap:

It's the furthest behind, but it's so crucial to my economy I can't really afford to take off any of those Towns for more artists.

However, turning the slider up to max has a pretty large effect:

So, if I don't get the artist, it'll just take a bit longer, and I wont be able to use my cash for upgrades.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Purely out of curiosity, if the other players invaded next turn, would you be able to hold on long enough to win still? At what point do we hit the point of no return on your cultural victory?