[SPOILERS - PBEM17] novice and spaceman - Suryavarman of India

[spacemanmf]

Looking good. I don't know if you're waiting for me or if you forgot, but feel free to pass the save on.

If Dave's troops are deployed similarly next turn, we could punch through his stack blocking Sidon.

Hmmm, thought I sent it...

EDIT: Sans attachment, it seems.

[spacemanmf]

I've opened up the save and done some scouting. Darrell requested 394 gold to fund Stealth which I accepted. He also razed two cities of Dave - Tyre and Antioch.



Dave has 2 missile cruisers, 6 battleships and 13 destroyers outside Sidon. It's tempting to have a go. We have 8 bombers in range (Darrell gifted 4 more but they're in Cash Cow - incidentally we can fit 6 aircraft in there if gifted, despite no airport). We have 4 missile cruisers, 1 battleship and 11 destroyers that can attack and then hide. Unfortunately, the remaining 4 battleships can't quite make it and hide since they can't get Navigation I or II. But I think it's worth a go.



I'll plonk the save back in our inbox for now since I have stuff to do.

[novice]

We could capture Sidon and hide the rest of the ships in there. Put some infantry in the city and upgrade to mech inf. Depends on how many land units he has on the minland. Units in 'nople are out of range.

All things considered I favour not capturing Sidon, and hitting his stack with all we've got since it looks like we should get a decent exchange rate.

[spacemanmf]

We don't have enough ships to do that, even if we win all battles (EDIT: except that we can use transports if needed, can't we - that seems like a stretch, though). Yeah, I'm in favour of taking out some ships but keeping safe. I'm heading out now but can play in about 3-4 hours if needed.

[novice]

Took a look at the save. Dave also left us a battleship stack as easy pickings. Our ships can attack from Aleppo and retreat back to Aleppo. Lower risk and lower payoff.

[spacemanmf]

Took a look at the save. Dave also left us a battleship stack as easy pickings. Our ships can attack from Aleppo and retreat back to Aleppo. Lower risk and lower payoff.

Yeah, I thought about taking out those but they are out of range of half the bombers, so I'm going for the big stack. I've bombed them and I can get 70-odd per cent odds with Combat III missile cruisers. (If I do Barrage it's less than 50% hence I'm going for Combat.)

[spacemanmf]

I took the first half of the turn, novice took the second. My part went rather well, which enabled novice to carry out some further fireworks. As I mentioned above, I sent the bombers into the stack of boats, and this was the result.



An unpromoted missile cruiser got 46% odds...



...but promoting to Combat III gave a much better chance.



Unfortunately, I lost, but then I went on a string of wins, with only one further loss, all for odds between 65% and 85%. So pretty lucky really. This was the outcome.



I had wiped out all but 7 injured boats for the cost of 2. Discussing it with novice, I realised we could use our battleships to take out most of the rest and leave them out of range of the other stack of battleships, leaving transports to clear out the rest, exposing Sidon.

However, I had things to do so I passed the baton on to novice and he can explain the rest...

[novice]

However, I had things to do so I passed the baton on to novice and he can explain the rest...

Thanks...

Well, here's the rest of the event log:



And here's the war theatre. Check out the zoom level, modern warfare operates at an awesome scale.

[novice]

So yeah, Dave had 21 ships 1SW of Sidon, and we sank them. Some of our ships couldn't reach Edessa, so they gathered 2S of Sidon instead, where they should be out of range of Dave's units.

We captured Sidon with units from Aleppo, then sailed through Sidon with 9-movers from Edessa and razed Cairo. We were going to raze Damascus too, but two battleships were blocking the way (as revealed by an empty transport serving as forward scout. We're not communicating reliably with Darrell so we have to do some scouting ourselves). Instead the troops destined for Damascus moved to attack Hattin, but Hattin turned out to be a staging point for HMS Surprise (lol) and was heavily defended. So in the end all our units retreated back to Edessa and 2S of Sidon to stage for next turn. Sidon is left undefended, and we deleted two transports north of Sidon.

We also captured Dave's two western island cities of Beirut and Damietta. They're recapturable, but defended by mech infs and we hope Dave is stretched too thin.

Next turn we're aiming to raze Sidon and Hattin, and capture Hebron or Leningrad (off the map to the east). Darrell will take Constantinople in 1-2 turns, and that means all of Dave's core facing us will be gone. In fact, only Jerusalem, Damascus and Samaria will remain.

[spacemanmf]

I took some pictures when novice handed me back the turn to finish off.

Here are our builds. Units, units, everywhere, being built rapidly in the last turn of our golden age (which was why we decided to stay in Vassalage for one more turn - two turns of drafting will follow).




Here's the western island with new owners.



The rest of the log, the results of novice's stint. (EDIT: Just realised you already posted this - not sure how I missed your post.)



Our main army after ending the turn. It put us a mere 20k lower than (I think) Dave in power. Given his superior city numbers, and the gifting from Shoot, that's not bad. To give him credit, it's taken a lot for us to get even close.



We are close to naval superiority, which would change things substantially. We have many missile cruisers heading north as reinforcements. However, our current navy needs to heal (I was thankful the medic destroyer survived its battle in particular).

Novice is a little paranoid about Shoot, who is hosting an airship of Dave's for scouting our lands, so we are going to reinforce our eastern coast with mech infs rather than send them all north. These will mostly come from drafts.