[SPOILERS] By the Rivers of Babylon, FIN has no effect (on krovice)

[Krill]

OK, turn is pretty much finished with everything moved. I'm taking requests for screenshots now whilst I type up the report, but here is a preview...be quick and ask for them and I can post them now.

[Mardoc]

Yay blood!

I'm confused: where is your stack? Did you advance after you took the screenshots? Your tactics imply you did - or else that I'm misunderstanding something.

[Krill]

Wrong front Mardoc: That's the north, and where we have to play defence around our HE city (which I only realised a few turns ago is opposite dtays HE city in Mankins). It's the appetiser before I post the forward troop movements

[Mardoc]

Gah, always hit preview before posting!

I meant by Willow Lake.

[Ceiliazul]

I was going to ask for north front actually. How about an f5 troops list and a shot of the ruff front? Best case, what are your goals in this war?

[Krill]

I was going to ask for north front actually. How about an f5 troops list and a shot of the ruff front? Best case, what are your goals in this war?

Goals will be in report, as with F5 but Ruff front: last turn I closed borders with him because I figured I'm going to need a while to reposition troops I think I might just go with the "I'm trying to fool dtay" approach after the game though. There is one interesting occurrence in one of hte graphs though :cute:

[Krill]

Gah, always hit preview before posting!

I meant by Willow Lake.

Overview shot will be first pic in the post.

[Krill]

Oh god, why did I sign up for this game. It has more drama than 13. I suppose this is a fitting end for today, I've had a shit couple of days and only just starting to feel better then instead of going food shopping (yay bachelor life) I have to play this turn for 4 hours.

I suppose that I'm going to just do a turn report, and I might type up an explanation of why the invasion isn't a complete death trap afterwards, but the tl;dr of that explanation is easy: I overestimated dtays strength and ability to continue to progress against Pindicator, to the extent he is losing ground: if he can't hold there then he might not be able to spare the resources to attack us and we may be more able to take something from him and withstand a counter attack. The why of all that is fairly interesting, but I know I'm guessing some of the details. I hope those assumptions aren't going to cause a clusterfuck in the next dozen turns.

Anyway the report.




Not an interesting screenshot, but it's necessary. Prairie Village is a border city in everything but name if we attack, but I do not accept that an attack for the three previously shown cities is good value. I want everything, so I'm planning to take it. We might be able to take it, if FinHarry try to take it for themselves and weaken dtay some more so he can't attack our north.





No build up pics. The GA is gaurded out of sight by two cannon. It can reach Willow Lake next turn and bomb if we capture the city. There are 8 Cannon, 12 knights, 8 muskets, 4WE and 4 cats to attack with. Oh, and when I said we could kill a 600 hammer stack next turn I was wrong. I think we could kill a 2000 hammer stack with those units and a bit of luck, because the second stack is another 12 knights and 7HA positioned more forward to threaten Prairie Village next turn. They are exposed though: any units in Avendale can attack the knight/HA stack, but I am gambling that there aren't more than 4 units in that city, and dtay will want to put them in Willow Lake to try and hold. But against that stack he can't, so I don't know what he is going to do. In hindsight, I'm not sure if this was a smart move, but...there is a mini stack 41 of Pigeon English with a cannon in it, and depending on culture in Willow Lake after a bomb, I'm hedging that it is possible to attack PV with a cannon if dtay tries to defend there.

There is also a stack on the forest 411 of PE, but that is a diversion of 2 workers and some muskets/WE to defend a forest which I'm threatening to road and then move a fastmover stack next to Kamigawa (CH old city that was his front city against Whosit). There are no units to back it up, but once the road is in place then it's an additional threat for a few turns down the road.

My fears are around unit strength. Nothing I have has odds against cavalry on defence. If dtay has 15 Cav on defence that can hit that stack it dies. If he attacks with 5-6 he might even flank away a few cats. I'm just hoping that dtay is so stretched right now that he doesn't have cav that can reach this stack before I culture bomb the land and the slow movers are safe from attack. Read this paragraph again and try to understand just why I have been so hesitant to roll the dice.





The northern front is straightforward, I've got something like 7 cannon from next turn that are defending this area plus a bunch of junk and over 10 muskets. Some might say I'm being paranoid, but as I just said, I have nothing with odds against dtay on defence, so I need to keep enough here to kill a suicide stack of cav that dtay sends to raze a city or two. I can afford to lose DS, in the sense that it isn't a critical city with National Wonders, but I can't really lose anything. Just too far behind BGN, FinHarry and, well, dtay still. RC loss would be crushing as it's hte HE city. And it's not like we need these units to have superior numbers in the west is it?

The spy is something I've delayed for too long. I'm moving it to the banana 44 of RC on T176. T177 it moves 789, and if it is not discovered, moves 987 and uncovers Gronk on turn 178, and then moves 77 to find dtays capital on T179. We can then scout tile by tile for any defensive stacks from dtay or more likely try to find dtays dotmap based on guess work from known city locations. TBH, that sounds like a fun sub game and solid long term planning.





We finish 7 cannon next turn. Bunch of cities are finishing infrastructure at 4 hammers a turn, you can discount them from useful military building but everything is drafted. I'm trying to spread the drafts around and not stack the anger, but I've already stacked it in a bunch of cities. I am taking into account travel time, but until this turn I've also tried to draft the island so that we did have units on hand for an emergency invasion of Ruff as the main stack could not have gotten there fast enough. Side note: I have 1 galley manning the channel and it's not enough, but as I was planning on Galleons that wasn't a priority. Now something I need to rethink. Also, please understand our GNP is really about a third of the big three at best. No OU, no PP, and minimal cottages anyway.








Shit we have 42 muskets? I'm not even trying to draft them hard. Kinda tempted to just head to Rifling now, bunch of people have PP and we can get it in 2 turns, RP is likely a 4 turn tech as well and gives us a good amount of hammers (+1h from mines, windmills, quarries plus that junk item of the lumber mill). Even if Rifling is going to take an excruciatingly long time to research. I think I realistically have about 100 units defending the north and attacking the west, as even those 8 HA are relevant when we have cannons and dtay doesn't. OK, maybe that's hard to buy but still need sentry chariots and suicide scouting units. Maybe 75 real units due to units on the island (EDIT: checked, yeah 10 muskets on the island whilst draft anger cools there).





We are numero uno, huehuehue. But yeah, dtay got fucking crushed by Pin, WTF happened there? Interesting note, slope of graphs for TBS and ourselves, it seems that both of us were drafting at a rate determined by map size rather than anything else. Note that OldTourist are pretty low and that BGN is not much better off: we could have tried to fight him after Ruff and we may not have been at a local power disadvantage.

More importantly: Ruff lost a stack against Q. I saw Ruff retreating and a bunch of damaged units in a Q city, it looks like axes do hold up quite well against knights when you have numbers. Those lost units may have given us a better opening to blitz Ruff but we won't see that now, will we? Now for a few more demographs and less writing:













You can see that our economy is not as strong as OldTourist, dtays or BGNs in any major metric except power.We needed to turn temp power into land, yada yada you know the metagame stuff. I know feel that the circumstances are such that we have an opportunity to get that land from dtay when before today I didn't. We just have to make sure that BGN doesn't eat that entire eastern continent, the pressure from dtay relieves and he snaps back and smacks us in the face, or that OldTourist take any of the sweet western land from us. I have a plan for all three, but trying them at the same time is going to be hard.

Good job I like a challenge.





This is what we know of the Ruff front that doesn't involve a ton of ancient era floating garbage. I've been checking his units next to Q and frankly he doesn't have anything better than a couple of knights, not even a decent stack of them and just lost his northern city back to Q. I'm heading back to keep an eye on BGN so I have info to react to his plays over here.

[Mardoc]

I want everything, so I'm planning to take it.

And how do you define 'everything'? Everything Dtay currently owns? Just the stuff you can march to? Just the west?

I dunno if that's even a reasonable question, though. Probably what you really mean is 'everything my army can take, I'll find out what that is when we fight'.

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Other question: In retrospect, should Dtay have invaded you instead of Pindicator? Or could you have made that a fiasco? Did he do anything wrong strategically, or just get unlucky?

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Hope you're feeling better soon.

[Krill]

Best case, what are your goals in this war?

I hate kingmaking. I hate playing in a game knowing that my actions help one player over another and I'm not choosing what is best for my civ but choosing whom I want to win. So right now, I'm not doing that, I'm playing this game to win. It's not easy, and I know it sure as fuck isn't likely, but I'm going to propose a bunch of risky plays to try it.

Right now, I think mine and novice's civ is in as good a position as could be hoped for a start that lacked a plains hill and didn't have a second city when dtay had his third. We've constantly been playing this game to make it hard for dtay to attack us. We've sacrificed long term growth for short term security (albeit that included a solid long term defensive dot map). And now we are declaring on dtay when he is being stretched by other players that he has invaded, and are his main competitors. We aren't invading to make a mess and break his spirit. We're invading because right now there is a path to taking over our continent and winning this game.

Here is the path, based out on step by step goals. I'm going to include the predicted actions of other major partie, because I'm planning with those in mind.

• Now that we have declared war on dtay, FinHarry are no longer attacking him to slow him down, they are planning on annexing dtays western lands (that are between them and us). We want them to fight. And hurt each other, losing cuirs against drafted rifles in bloodied heaps of pixels. FinHarry are the sledgehammer, smashing down through brute strength (and wielded with some strong armed finesse all the same) against an anvil.
  
  
• Pindicator is out for revenge. He wants his lands back. He has a medic three unit (or damned well should have one) to heel his units and keep on pushing. He has wiped out so many units dtay has to either reinforce those lands or pull out entirely. Does he even have the transport capacity to move off that continent? I doubt he wants to cede so many cities. He'll fight. I don't care so long as dtay keep units in that area and isn't hitting me with them. Pindicator is the dagger, he has pierced the armour of dtays army and is going to start running through cities if dtay doesn't rebuild and reposition his army quickly.
  
  
  
• BGN is watching this from a distance, his main rival is flagging, bled dry from losing cities to a galleon forking and raze strategy that stretched his army past breaking point and now has the new #1 power about to break his opponents empire in half. He has no one except weaklings next to him, time to devour them, get a huge land lead and then start a snowball larger than the one that dtay has failed to create.

These are our opponents. This is what I'm going to do to stop them winning.

• Pindicator isn't winning this, so he isn't a threat, but him taking dtay off that continent, along with the other city losses that this version of events would entail removes dtay as a potential victor. dtay would be back down to 15 or so cities, a good tech edge that he couldn't keep up and limited hpt compared to ourselves. We would be able to manage his reprisals. The longer term plan would be about absorbing his cities into the empire including that tasty shrine: that is simply, stacks of units that he can't collateral and kill. The same plan he would have produced and used against us. Standard plan of Goliath versus David: Smush 'im into the ground.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• FinHarry will attack dtay to take that land. They will lose units. We are going to wait and take Theros...and then culture bomb with with our second GA. This land is ours and I'm going to make in uninhabitable for them. This means that we need to check for cities south west of Prairie Village and likely raze and resettle, then slam a fastmover stack into Theros at an opportune time. Knights will work depending on units. After that, we need to hold that single city.
  
  Coastal cities I don't care about, we can't hold them against FinHarry, but by god are the land tiles and cottages going to be ours. We already have the GA extant and ready to get there. We can build knights and have a decent number already. We have a plan to take PV. This part of hte plan has already been designed, it was there when I first tried to figure out how to hold it if we attacked CH before dtay went on the tech rampage to knights. It'll work against anyone, the only important points are getting the city, getting the GA to it and then being able to hold it after the bomb. Do that and we hold that land, because no one else will have any tiles to work.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• BGN is the most interesting one. We can't attack him. We can only remove some of his tasty morsels for ourselves. So we have to invade Ruff. Yes, I'm intending to fight three wars at the same time, and then eventually four for a short while, even if one of them is potentially a cold war against dtay for some periods (if htghe plan works, anyway). That's why we are still going for Astro. Now, there is one issue with this. I'm intending to use one artist at Willow Lake, and the second at Theros. I'm going to need a third to bomb here to get a decent front against BGN? Well, before I go off gallivanting, WailAway is running pure Artists for 90%+ GA chance. This is also a safe ploy because with the GS and GM, a Great Artist would enable a Golden Age anyway.
  
  
  So, yeah, attacking Ruff, still on the cards. Same plan as before. Get Astro, build 5 move galleons, load with units, take out 6 cities in 2 turns. We'll need units though. That's why I intend to stop building mass cannons after this wave and go back to units. Drafted muskets are still valid off boats, and with Frigates I can bomb down the city defences to 0 (or can do in Marblehead, the rest just suck up the pain). Some CR2 Maces are possible as well. This is the shaky bit, because I don't know how many units I can strip out from the defence against dtay. I may have to stack the draft anger pretty higher in some cities.
  
  
  
  
  A safer option is to just invade from the east and grind west with 3 stacks. Cannon are perfect for this, Ruff has no counter, no Education, no PP, no Philo for drafting, only has Gunpowder and no Chemistry and just lost units against Q. And he borders BGN so will have to play for some defence there. To do that, I would still want to attack off the boats on turn 1 of the war, and then try to push onwards to split city defences, so I want at least 10 galleons full of units for the first wave and then the same again to push onwards. So 60 units, plus 10 Galleons plus 5 Frigates. In all Honesty, that's affordable. Astronomy is due in 4 turns, eot T177. I am prebuilding galleons in some places and expect to make the water units in 10 turns easily out of just WA and Cf. And with MG drafting a unit per turn that's a further 10 muskets to fill the boats. It's going to happen before T190 that's for sure.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  We grab the cities, push as far as we can, plant a front city and bomb it. We integrate the land, we grow the cities, we draft them, and build cannons whilst staring at BGN over razorwire. We push as far and as hard as we can to make sure BGN has as little land as possible from the weaker players.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Which brings us to the last point goal:
  
  • dtay: we're going to cripple dtays ability to threaten us. Taking Willow Lake has always been step one in that plan, because it splits his empire and means he can't co-ordinate his defence of two areas, making him more vulnerable to attack. So long as we could hold Willow Lake with it bombed, and hold our other front cities, dtay could lose this game.
    
    So I'm taking Willow Lake. Then we're going to let dtay and OldToutist duke it out and stab the "victor" in the back. That basically puts us and dtay in the reverse position from 50 turns ago: one of us has all of Whosit and CH land, production and beakers, and the other doesn't. The larger civ builds up and walks in with a stack that is too large and takes all the cities on the mainland. Straightforward, and the only real flaw in that kind of plan is that you can fall behind due to sheer number of units built. Prize is second best shrine in the game though, so pretty much worth it, and frankly I think in this game you need the units anyway. Meanwhile I'm going to keep on building units and storing them at the front cities to just collateral and wipe out any stacks sent at us.
    
    After that, it's simply a matter of trying to defend coastal cities whilst steam rolling through weaker players, like dtay just tried to do.