[PB59] Lazteuq worries for the endangered lurker species

[Lazteuq]

Hereditary Rule, Nationalism, Slavery, Free Market, Organized Religion. Now that my industrialization has been interrupted just as it began, I'll swap back to Theocracy next turn.

Miguelito and Charriu didn't attack last turn. I'm retreating from GKC-land anyway. I'm just trying to hold the chokepoint so units can evacuate and consolidate.
I worry about just being whittled down by bombers though, even if I manage to stabilize a frontline. My supermedic can hopefully counteract bomber attrition, especially since I play first so I play after the healing gets to take effect.
I'm sort of hoping that Miguelito and Amica both invade GKC-land and fight eachother now.

[Lazteuq]

Turn 238
The big news:
Amica, Miguelito, and Civac converged on Picadilly and did a lot of damage. I don't know whether this will stop his space attempt, but I assume it will. He must be outnumbered at least 4:1 in unit production. Picadilly did move his capitol inland, but still I assume he's out of the running and now it's a 2-way competition.
Charriu declared on Amica, and Miguelito is rolling in with Mechanized Infantry, although he hasn't declared.

I logged in to see a blank peace offer from Amica...If I accept peace, I'm screwing over Charriu and Miguelito and I don't gain much. Now that I have help, I think I can stabilize this front and push back, so why should I take peace? I've already whipped and drafted my cities into the ground, the only interesting thing left to do is WAR!

So, I refused that blank peace offer, only to see one with 200gpt thrown in.

That's a lot, but what good to me is 200gpt? That's only 2 Infantry upgrades per turn as I see it. I have very little interest in doing research, so gold/beakers don't mean much to me. DECLINED!

On the previous turn, I tried to trap Amica's stack in Barbar8(the chokepoint city). Amica had captured it and stacked a bunch of tanks, probably preparing to push north across the flatland, just as I did with my Knights against GKC many centuries ago.

I cut the neutral roads leading from the city to block him from pushing out with tanks or retreating east, and positioned a bunch of units to counterattack. He hadn't brought any workers, so this really reduced his potential to cause mayhem. Later in the turn Miguelito brought units nearby as well. I guess Amica saw this upcoming slaughter and evacuated/deleted the stack. I don't see where transports could have fled to, so I think they were deleted! I call that a victory.
I did decide to recapture Barbar8, I hope Miguelito sees the value in helping to defend it. Maybe I'm stretching defenses too thin by trying to hold it, we'll see.

I've decided to use Steller as a strongpoint because it's on a hill and its culture dominates a large area. I considered ceding all control of the coast, but dismissed that idea and instead I'm stacking a somewhat absurd number of units in there. I'm even keeping some cannons in the city to help soak up collateral. That's risky, if I lose too many cannons I won't be able to deter an overland push and I'll get rolled up like Tarkeel.
Fin is very lightly defended and may fall next turn. I can't afford to cover such a long extent of coastline, so it will have to go. I feel like Steller and Dugong are pretty secure though. The bombers can only do so much collateral, and there's a limit to how many bombers Amica can station nearby.

I'm half expecting Miguelito to switch sides and vulture all of GKC-land with his Mechanized Infantry and upcoming Modern Armor.
Let me be clear: I don't have an agenda anymore for who I want to win. Amica kinda lost any goodwill by capturing my coastline. Miguelito has been pretty kind recently, but I still don't want to support him beyond the interest of my own defense.

[Lazteuq]

T239

Amica is offering peace again and didn't take any more cities of mine. That's a very nice gesture, I do appreciate it, but still...WAR!  I didn't even put much thought into this choice because now Miguelito is at war with Amica along with Charriu. 
That war helps confirm my suspicion that Picadilly is out of competition. If Miguelito still saw Picadilly as the main threat, he probably wouldn't be so willing to fight Amica.

Or maybe not.... Looking at the event log, I see that Picadilly did manage to launch the spaceship, and Amica declared on Miguelito, not the reverse! Still, Civac and Ichabod have joined the dogpile on Picadilly now. I don't see how he can survive!
It's hard to say how much Amica is playing for a win. I have no idea how close Miguelito is to a spaceship.



I know last turn Amica had a bunch of transports just out of range of my southern coast. I expect those will cause havoc soon. But now Charriu is reinforcing my south, which is fantastic. Miguelito even has Missile Cruisers in my waters now, so Amica is running out of easy targets.

I think Amica has no chance of making meaningful gains against me unless (A):He uses nuclear weapons or (B):Charriu and Miguelito abandon me. Sure, he can capture or raze coastal cities, but I don't see how he can make progress more than one tile inland.



Amica showed great diplomatic restraint in not taking Fin but leaving a lone musketman in the city. Again, I appreciate the gesture, but whatever. I already gave up on Fin. Hopefully he commits a serious landing force and I can shred him with siege. I have a stack hidden where city vision doesn't cover it. If he uses recon missions with aircraft he can see them, but I'm hoping he doesn't bother. Sure, he can stack lots of Machine Guns in there, but I can promote Cannons to CR2 and get decent odds against them while doing collateral to anything that isn't a MG. Then Charriu has a stack of Cavalry and Cuirassiers nearby which can smash weakened MGs as well.

I really wish I had something to challenge Amica's air superiority. That's an advantage of Machine Guns I had forgotten. Now that my death is not totally imminent, maybe I should get Railroad. I can get it in 5 turns. I don't have all that many Rifles left to upgrade. The bad news is that I'm running out of population to draft and whip. One GG was used to promote a bunch of drafted Infantry. The other GG will make a second Supermedic.

It would be pretty funny if Mjmd decided to attack my completely undefended west. Even with just a couple carracks, he could actually make some serious gains. I wouldn't even be mad.

[Lazteuq]

T242. The situation appears stable, but now I'm worried about nukes. I'm wondering if I should completely retreat from the coasts and spread out my stacks 2 tiles apart to minimize the damage. The only reason I'm able to hold the coasts is because stacking enough units saturates the collateral from Amica's bombers enough that it doesn't do much. Nukes can do infinite collateral though, so a stack of allmost 100 units could just evaporate.
Miguelito completed the Manhattan project only last turn. I assume he had a bunch of production ready for it, so he may already be rebasing nukes this turn. Amica likely didn't have builds prepared so I may have a couple turns yet to prepare.
I can't anticipate an ICBM since they strike from anywhere on the map, but I'm guessing Amica will build tactical nukes because they're so much cheaper. They have short enough range that I should be able to see them, EXCEPT they can be loaded onto submarines. Worst-case is that Amica could rebase a Tactical Nuke and load it onto a sub near me this turn and nuke me next turn. I would never see it since I have no vision on submarines.

I was scared at first when I saw Miguelito made peace with Amica, but then I realized it's only a cease-fire.

[Lazteuq]

T244: After I evacuated Barbar Central (GKC's old capitol), I brought in a ton of units within 10 tiles to hit it if Amica takes it. Also Charriu brought up his 2-mover stack. It looks like our combined preparations were a good enough deterrent , since Amica didn't take the city even though it's empty. Now he has 13 transports and 7 galleons within range. That's potentially as much as 75 units. I'm somewhat scared of that, even with Charriu's help. We have roughly 70 killing units in range, plus my 28 cannons and 8 catapults, most with Barrage III. So it would be a pretty even fight I think.

I'm much more scared of what I can't see: Tactical Nukes. Now that Miguelito made peace, Amica's navy is dominant, there could be subs anywhere. I know Charriu has some decent ships but I haven't seen what they might be doing. Maybe they're all dead.

I guess I could offer a peace treaty now that I'm in existential fear. Previously I was so defiant because I knew Amica couldn't easily win. But peace sounds boring and lame anyway. I mean, what would I do? Tech combustion for no real reason? Just whip more units? This war is the most fun I've had in PB59 in a while. Amica started this, let's see how it ends.

It's been 3 turns since Manhattan Project dropped, so I could certainly believe a whipped nuke showing up. It would be T241 to get it started, T242 turn to finish with the whip, and T243 to rebase it and load on a sub. That means this turn (T244) could theoretically be launch day. A nuke whip sounds crazy with CtH's increased prices, but Amica has Kremlin and ridiculous amounts of food from Cereal Mills, so I could believe it. With Forge, Factory, Coal Plant, Kremlin, and Police State, it's 175% production boost, so only about a 9 pop whip(if my math is right). An ICBM would be double that, so at least that's still not going to happen for a couple more turns.
The question is... Am I a worthy target for a Tactical Nuke? It sounds ridiculous from my point of view to spend nukes on me when Miguelito is the real threat, but also, Amica decided this war was worth it in the first place.
I can't afford to be wrong, just a single nuke could probably smash any one of my three main stacks enough for an amphibious attack to clean it up easily.

So, I decided it is time to evacuate the coasts and scatter apart the stacks. That's unfortunate because it means my two Supermedics won't be able to do as much healing. Hopefully the reduced collateral means I don't need as much healing..? If I stay at least 6 tiles from the outer coast I should be perfectly safe from tactical nukes on subs. Sadly 5 tiles inland covers a large fraction of the map, easily over half of my territory...And of course nowhere is safe from ICBMs.

This process is really an exercise in paranoia. For example, the gold tile 2W of Vaquita looks safe...until you realize that if Amica takes Steller and moves a sub into the city, they can land a tac nuke 1 tile away. Can't forget about the radius of effect. Similarly, the city of Hectors isn't safe because Amica could nuke the coast 1NE of it.
Considering how oppressive the range of sub-based tactical nukes is, I decided it's better to split stacks near the coast so that they are simply not worth hitting. I decided to do little bunches of 6-8 units, half cannons. Bombers hit up to 7 non-siege units; I wanted each stack significantly less than that to make bombing painfully inefficient.
I'm also wary of tanks unloading out of newly captured cities. Anything within 2 tiles of a coastal city is at risk.

I really hope Charriu understands the danger and splits his 2mover stack or at least moves it off the coast a bit more. You can see it on the left in the first screenshot near Barbar Central. Miguelito's stack of Modern Armor and Mech Infantry in Barbar13 might also get hit.

I guess one nice thing is that if Amica nukes a stack and doesn't kill stuff outright in that very same turn, I get to consolidate and heal up in 2 turns with a supermedic. I know 1 nuke is not normally enough to kill decent units. I think to wipe a stack completely Amica will need either 2 or 3 nukes. I really struggle to imagine how that's worth the hammers, but again, I'm in no position to risk it.
I'll probably lose all four coastal cities I evacuated this turn including the capitol, but that's just how it has to be.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Glad to see barbar central still standing! Reading through your posts (and everyone elses) to catch up, thanks for the reporting!

[Lazteuq]

Thanks for lurking, it's good to know you're still around. Barbar Central continues to stand, with a single Spearman inside. I think Amica might take it this turn, since Charriu moved his stack too far away to help.
I scattered my units even more, because I realized that they were still too vulnerable to bombers. Now it looks like I'm playing civ5. Railroad finally comes in next turn. No nukes dropped from Amica yet.

I pulled off this sneaky manuever somehow:

And razed the city. These spies on islands have been pretty handy.

Related: While I don't like the Espionage system allowing city vision, at least it is slightly less oppressive when spies are allowed. When we ban spies in most RB games, we're just making city vision even more overpowered and uncounterable. Thoughts?

[Hitru]

As long as spy missions are banned I think they are ok. Would personally reduce their area of visibility though.

[Lazteuq]

I agree for sure, no missions.
Doesn't RtR reduce their vision to just the tile they stand on? Is that what you mean? That sounds too extreme to me but I've never played it.

In game news, nothing has made me feel like reporting. The situation feels pretty stable right now. Of course if Amica commits more units (nukes?) to this continent Charriu and I could crumple, but so far Miguelito looks to be kicking Amica out. I only got a tiny exposure to one nuke. I do believe my spreading out units is enough to deter nuking. I wonder how SDI works though...will Miguelito's SDI protect his allies all the time, or only if he has a unit in the blast radius?

[Charriu]

Hello friendly neighbor. Our relationship in this game truely was a bumpy ride from "oh I don't trust him ever, for destroying a city of mine earlier" to "I defend my arch-nemesis from a much larger force". What a game!