[Spoilers] Haram hopefully reports

[Old Harry]

Fourth ring borders normally include that diagonal tile 3n/s,e/w.

Thanks for the detail - it's great to have you back and reporting!

[DaveV]

Grumble grumble screenshot tags grumble grumble horizontal scrolling grumble grumble.

[scooter]

Grumble grumble screenshot tags grumble grumble horizontal scrolling grumble grumble.

Sorry about this, but honestly I really dislike screenshot tags and reading threads where I have to click every image, so I mostly avoid it. Not sure if I'm alone on this? My screenshots are 1200px wide, which should work on most screens/browsers. How bad is it for you? If it's close, you might try Ctrl-minus on your keyboard to zoom it out slightly, and that might help. I find I do that a lot while browsing RB because page widths vary wildly thread-to-thread due to screenshots.

Fourth ring borders normally include that diagonal tile 3n/s,e/w.

Thanks for the detail - it's great to have you back and reporting!

Thanks on both counts! Makes sense about the cultural borders. I always end up having to test it during wars because I can never visualize what 4th ring looks like.

I feel like I never build enough boats to do these kinds of convoying maneuvers, I'm sure it makes a huge difference by cutting down on the reinforcement travel time.

It definitely does make a huge difference. I look at it this way: I'd rather have 9 rifles and 3 galleons than 12 rifles and 2 galleons. Those extra 3 rifles don't do you any good if they spend 8 turns walking.

When you're invading, your main weakness/bottleneck is your reinforcement line, because the more ground you take, the longer your supply line and the shorter your opponent's supply line is. It's easy to run into a scenario where you've got plenty of units, but you just can't get them all to the same tile at the right time. Without these Galleon logistics, I'd probably be huddling in newly captured cities for a couple more turns waiting for replacement units, but instead I'm able to move forward immediately and count on boats to refresh my stacks. Boats on water maps basically cut down on waste. Every turn a unit is walking 3 tiles/turn instead of fighting/pressuring your opponent is a turn you've invested hammers/gold/pop for a unit to take a sunday stroll. Extra boats help you earn a return on that investment much more quickly.

[DaveV]

Grumble grumble screenshot tags grumble grumble horizontal scrolling grumble grumble.

Sorry about this, but honestly I really dislike screenshot tags and reading threads where I have to click every image, so I mostly avoid it. Not sure if I'm alone on this? My screenshots are 1200px wide, which should work on most screens/browsers. How bad is it for you? If it's close, you might try Ctrl-minus on your keyboard to zoom it out slightly, and that might help. I find I do that a lot while browsing RB because page widths vary wildly thread-to-thread due to screenshots.

I'm not even sure what the resolution is on my home laptop, but it's pretty old and may well only be 1024 pixels wide. I know it took a significant amount of horizontal scrolling to read the text, which frustrates me enough that I usually give up after a few lines. Which is frustrating in another way, because your posts are usually well worth reading.

Note that I'm asking for [ screenshot] tags instead of [ img] tags, not [ spoiler] tags which I also dislike. Your screenshots are pretty dense, so if you're concerned about losing half the information by shrinking them down to 800 pixels wide I can't argue with you. I'll just wait to read your posts until I can use a better computer.

Edit: as for the zooming trick, I'm afraid I won't be able to read the text if I zoom out enough to fit the picture on my screen. I'll try it next time.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Grumble grumble screenshot tags grumble grumble horizontal scrolling grumble grumble.

Sorry about this, but honestly I really dislike screenshot tags and reading threads where I have to click every image, so I mostly avoid it. Not sure if I'm alone on this? My screenshots are 1200px wide, which should work on most screens/browsers. How bad is it for you? If it's close, you might try Ctrl-minus on your keyboard to zoom it out slightly, and that might help. I find I do that a lot while browsing RB because page widths vary wildly thread-to-thread due to screenshots.

Fourth ring borders normally include that diagonal tile 3n/s,e/w.

Thanks for the detail - it's great to have you back and reporting!

Thanks on both counts! Makes sense about the cultural borders. I always end up having to test it during wars because I can never visualize what 4th ring looks like.

I feel like I never build enough boats to do these kinds of convoying maneuvers, I'm sure it makes a huge difference by cutting down on the reinforcement travel time.

It definitely does make a huge difference. I look at it this way: I'd rather have 9 rifles and 3 galleons than 12 rifles and 2 galleons. Those extra 3 rifles don't do you any good if they spend 8 turns walking.

When you're invading, your main weakness/bottleneck is your reinforcement line, because the more ground you take, the longer your supply line and the shorter your opponent's supply line is. It's easy to run into a scenario where you've got plenty of units, but you just can't get them all to the same tile at the right time. Without these Galleon logistics, I'd probably be huddling in newly captured cities for a couple more turns waiting for replacement units, but instead I'm able to move forward immediately and count on boats to refresh my stacks. Boats on water maps basically cut down on waste. Every turn a unit is walking 3 tiles/turn instead of fighting/pressuring your opponent is a turn you've invested hammers/gold/pop for a unit to take a sunday stroll. Extra boats help you earn a return on that investment much more quickly.

I like the no screenshots as I can read on my phone :P

[scooter]

Mackoti stole Physics from me. I don't really know - all I know is I logged in to see he had 2t remaining, and I couldn't match that even with a bulb. I think he generated a bunch of overflow and waited until after I played to select his tech the turn prior to get himself essentially a 2-turn head start. Whatever. Anyway, I decided rather than contest that I'm just going to go down the Assembly line path and get myself Levees and Factories. That'll require snagging Corporation, so I queued up some banks so that I can build Wall Street in my shrine city.

Mackoti's probably just going to fire a golden age and use that to build Kremlin quicker than would be possible for me anyway, so why bother burning more beakers on Communism. I really regret researching Scientific Method for several reasons, but honestly I've focused all my attention on this war because it's fun, so I'm very aware that my tech choices have been super unfocused and lousy.

So forget all that - let's do some more fighting! Dreylin decided to pull 2 of his units out of Dishwasher and send them towards his capital of Toaster. It looks like he's gearing up for a big climactic fight here, and given the logistical difficulties with reaching Toaster, I don't blame him. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

c1 rifle vs cg musket: 33% WIN
c1 rifle vs cg musket: 78% WIN
2xp rifle vs axe: 98% WIN
2xp rifle vs warrior: 99% WIN

Well hey, I finally snagged myself a low-odds win.





Definitely the weakest infrastructure haul yet given the reasonably high population count. I'll get over it, though.

I debated for quite awhile what to do with Mixer in the south. I don't love razing cities when the dotmap is reasonable, but given that this city is 3 tiles from the capital, I would have to keep a real garrison in it, and defending my units along the way would lower the amount of rifles I'll have on hand for Toaster. So I decided to raze it with Knights.

pinch knight vs cg musket: 32% LOSS
c1 knight vs cg longbow: 67% WIN
c1 7xp knight vs redlined musket: 98% WIN
7xp knight vs warrior: 99% WIN

So rather than do a messy pic-stitch, here's two shots showing my two advances on Dreylin's capital. The big battle will happen on either T172 or T173, depending on 1) how many units he stuffs in and 2) whether he attacks out or not.



This is my primary army. 17 rifles, 2 maces, 3 trebs. This is primarily the group that I ferried in this turn combined with healthy leftovers from the attacks on Coffee and Dishwasher. Highlighted is the garrison in Toaster. 8 Muskets, 1 longbow, and he's adding another musket/longbow pair from Dishwasher that's sitting 1N of the city there. I wouldn't be surprised if he manages 15 Muskets when it's all said and done, which is why there's a good chance I'll sit and bombard for a turn.



Here are my two secondary stacks - another 11 rifles, 2 cats, and assorted extras. The stack that's selected (the central one with 7 rifles, 3 knights, 2 maces) Dreylin may consider attacking. I hope he does. He does have enough to wipe it out, but it would cost him basically all of his muskets. He's got just 3 cats, but if I assume he has 4 by completing one EoT, that should NOT be enough to get odds on the first attack. Napkin math said he could kill the stack at the cost of nearly every Musket, and that was before I added the two Knights (mainly just to eat up collateral). So I probably made it too stiff a target to be attacked. I'm guessing he'll end up huddling in the city, but the fun of killing a stack may just be too much for him to pass up.

I've got a few other minor things, but those will wait for a later post.

[scooter]

Ok, a few other stray things. I revolted to this set of civics.



I did a quick before/after of my finances too.





Pretty solid improvement, although granted that's at 100% science during a golden age, so the real improvement is smaller than that. The other development was something I've been suspecting...



TBS intends to scavenge Dreylin it appears. Those units are staged to land next to one of Dreylin's southern island cities that I've thus far had to ignore. Fortunately, Dreylin's cities (that I've seen anyway) are reasonably well stocked. However, this should be an easy win for TBS. I'm not quite sure what my plan will be. I've got a nice group of SOTL/Frigates I'm moving into southern waters to knock out Dreylin's navy, and I'm hoping I can do this quickly enough to still get a couple of the cities on the south island.

I haven't decided yet how irritated I am at TBS for this. Right now I'm at a roughly 4/10, but I don't know if that will go up or down. It'll depend a little on how much of a fight Dreylin can put up, and how much effort TBS expends to make sure I don't get any from that island. If I feel like I'm getting screwed, counter-attacking TBS will be on the menu. It also depends on Mackoti's willingness to leave me alone.

Mackoti seems to be shifting to attack someone. If it's me, well I'll just do my best to make sure TBS wins. I left some stuff behind, but he could probably do some real initial damage to me if he was really determined to do so, but I think I would stalemate him pretty quickly. If it's someone else, I'll try to make like TBS and scavenge as best as I can, but I suspect he may be sizing up Borsche who I can't do much scavenging to. I'd really prefer Mackoti attacks wetbandit, but that strikes me as far less likely.

[scooter]

Relatively quiet turn.



Dreylin had his Frigates on this tile last turn. I think he advanced them forward a bit, saw my incoming SOTL, and he deleted them. They were nowhere to be found - not even hiding inside that Jowy city. Guess he wanted to deny me the XP. So I've loaded up a couple Galleons to loop around the north with the goal of being able to hit the city behind Toaster more quickly once it falls.



Dreylin decided not to attack any of my units, so here's how things stand. This is my entire group that will attack on T172. A couple other units can join as well, but they're either 2-movers or will have to attack across the river if they want to attack on T172. I may delay the attack by a turn and bombard because I think the benefits of that may outweigh the downside of giving him an extra turn to pile units in.



In the meantime, with TBS invading Dreylin, I'm prepping to drop a group on the south island and see what I can do. This is definitely not the way I wanted to do it and will be more rushed than I planned, but I just can't let him take the entire island. Him taking a couple cities is inevitable, but I should be able to grab the cities nearest to me. With SOTL in this bay now, I've got full water control again, so that will help. I'm Dreylin attacks TBS's stack at some point and makes things easier on me, but we'll just have to see what happens. I've got several more off-screen units that will be ferried and/or chained in as well.



I'm trying to rope together a great person plan. The prophet odds were in the 80s recently, but I've gotten them down as much as I can. The problem is that I'm not sure I can get to a 4-person GA. All I've got is a scientist right now, and the great person threshold is very high right now. I don't see myself being able to generate 2 more all that soon, so it seems that the most likely path to a 4-person is to generate something other than a scientist here, and then generate one more (non-matching) and then somehow snag the Fusion Engineer.

I think that sequence of events is overall pretty unlikely, so I'm thinking about playing with Corporations instead. Confession time: I've never founded a corporation before. Maybe I did once in my very first BtS game when it first came out, but since then - nope. I don't play SP Civ, and around here Corps are normally either modded out of the game, banned, or games get called before they're an option... so I'm giving myself a crash course in how they even work. But with badly nerfed State Property, I figure I may as well. I'm not sure it's the best option, but it sounds fun. Also with a nice shrine city already set up and Wall Street on the way, I figure settling any sort of HQ there promises to be pretty lucrative.

Sid's is nerfed pretty bad here, but it may still be worthwhile. Mining Inc is obviously the ideal, but that rides on a 2-3% Engineer, so that's definitely not happening.

Anyway, all that to say - if I land a Priest, I may suck it up and try to figure out a way to get a 4-person GA. If I land one of the other things, though, I may go ahead and grab a Corporation. Plan is very much a work in progress here. I wrote this off when I first started subbing because it didn't seem likely, but as time as gone on I've realized that I probably could have pulled the 4-person off if I had really worked at it during the golden age. War turns were just too busy as-is though.



It appears Mackoti maybe isn't planning to attack someone else after all. I think he's about to fire a golden age and get a bunch of strong stuff, so he may not need to.

[Haram]

This is my entire group that will attack on T172. A couple other units can join as well, but they're either 2-movers or will have to attack across the river if they want to attack on T172. I may delay the attack by a turn and bombard because I think the benefits of that may outweigh the downside of giving him an extra turn to pile units in.



In the meantime, with TBS invading Dreylin, I'm prepping to drop a group on the south island and see what I can do. This is definitely not the way I wanted to do it and will be more rushed than I planned, but I just can't let him take the entire island. Him taking a couple cities is inevitable, but I should be able to grab the cities nearest to me. With SOTL in this bay now, I've got full water control again, so that will help. I'm Dreylin attacks TBS's stack at some point and makes things easier on me, but we'll just have to see what happens. I've got several more off-screen units that will be ferried and/or chained in as well.

The additional turn won't matter for Dreylin, but it may matter, if you think seriously about contesting the island. What forces TBS is bringing up there?

[scooter]

The additional turn won't matter for Dreylin, but it may matter, if you think seriously about contesting the island. What forces TBS is bringing up there?

Yeah, that's going to be a factor for sure. The problem is that I don't know what he's got down there yet. I've got a couple Caravels and a Spy on the way, but TBS has a couple Privateers, so nothing will stop him from just popping the Caravels if he doesn't want them looking. I should be able to get eyes on the area by T172 at the latest, though, so I'll at least be able to make an informed decision whether I should rush the attack or not.

That said - even if I attack right away, we're still talking about a couple more turns after that to reposition down to the island, so that's why I'm planning a smaller detachment to land much sooner. The problem is I need to be careful about where exactly I place them so as to not invite Dreylin's full attention. The advantage TBS has is that he's sitting on Cannons, which Dreylin can't collateral, so Dreylin will have a much harder time getting odds on whatever TBS has. With my rifles, he could still find a use for his cats if he has enough of them in range.