[SPOILERS] Woden and ljubljana like boats

[ljubljana]

Right, I forgot about Conservation which should be a major accelerant for us. The nice thing about that is that Russia's cities are basically capped out on production as they are out of forestable land, while you have plenty left at Thor. Maybe worth not just using that to procrastinate Fascism for the War Department, but affirmatively prioritizing it so you can have forests up in time for the MP.

Wow, crazy turnaround on the WC! Sadly I can't play for a while, as I have to, uh, work, and stuff.

[Woden]

My plan is to pillage any culture over the next 10 turns into it. I think there is 5 or 6 turns left once the neighborhood finishes at Frigg and at least 2 pillages at Cutter's Hollow. There is also 1 pasture at The College Dropout.

I loaded the save up and Thor's current production is 72.9 with 4 coming from Valletta since I am building a unit, so 68.9 production. The city has 5 grassland tiles that can be forested and 1 plains tile. Three jungle tiles with 3 lumbermills and a plantation that can be harvested and replaced with a forested lumbermill. Each flat tile and the plantation will add 3 production (so 21) and each jungle lumbermill will gain +1 production (3), so roughly 24 added production. Also, Thor doesn't own all its tiles it can. There is one of the lumbermill jungle tiles and a mine that Freyr is working and Frigg is working one of the lumbermill tiles. It is also only getting 4 production from incoming trade routes and 13 from outgoing. We can change that by a lot.

One thing Thor is going to need is housing but it does have a granary and sewer still available to build and with the jungle chops and a marsh, I should be able to get its population up so it can work all its tiles. The next thing I will need is builders, so maybe I go for Conservation ASAP and switch into Public Works. I could use some of the jungle chops to get builders out so I can get everything forested. It would slow production on the Manhattan Project but would accelerate nuke production because I would have a much higher base production. Need to thing about it. I am going to need 25 builder actions to harvest and replace with lumbermill forests and currently have 5 actions available, so I need at least 4 builders with 5 actions for Thor alone. Loki and W(O)din will need some builder love too, as will other cities. I am going to need a shit ton of builders in the coming turn if we want to destroy Russia. So, yes, I think Conservation is going to be a priority over Totalitarianism so I can use the last bit in Democracy to get builders out.

[Woden]

Here is how I left my ships in the north...
   

I think the best path forward is going to have my main fleet sail along the ice and have the 2 IC and 1 destroyer sail along the coast. Use them as bait while keeping the main fleet in range to strike if they get attacked. If the main fleet reaches China before we spot his fleet. then reassess. I think a good defensive position for Russia is between Buyniy and the island city. We will have to see how long it is before the island city flips or if he retakes Buyniy on his turn.

[ljubljana]

Agreed about builders and Conservation. Hopefully other cities can pick up the builder slack somewhat so Thor does not need to deviate from the MP...it will not take many turns of deviation to undo all the speedup you will get from the extra production. At least, as far as the first nuke is concerned. For other nukes you will ostensibly still get a speedup, but actually not really as Thor will very likely be Russia's first target.

We should also take time to forest up the cities in England/Japan as applicable. Russia is going to kill your core pretty early, and you his, if the war drags on and you both get nukes. But you have two other cores to fall back on and he has none. I think that's your biggest advantage long-term, if you can manage to get off-island cities to be nuke-capable as well, even if they are on the slow end. I will also finally gift you Fort Lakton to this end as soon as you finish off Japan.

Agreed about the basic tactical approach to fighting Russia. I do think 2 IC + 1 destroyer is a lot to use as bait as it will actually hurt quite a lot to lose those units. I'd recommend moving the destroyer and one IC back and letting the bait be just one IC and my caravels.

Sadly the island city is finally out of flip range for Russia as of this turn It is still badly in the negatives on pop pressure (though not the full -20) but is getting +12 from Victor and a mysterious +9 in "other factors" that I do not understand... But maybe that will go away eventually as it did at Adios Hermanos?

[Woden]

Agreed about the basic tactical approach to fighting Russia. I do think 2 IC + 1 destroyer is a lot to use as bait as it will actually hurt quite a lot to lose those units. I'd recommend moving the destroyer and one IC back and letting the bait be just one IC and my caravels.

The reasoning behind 3 ships instead of just 1 is that with only 1 ship, Russia could kill it with minimal effort but with 3 ships (especially 1 destroyer), it will take significant force and then we can hit him with our main navy. It is giving up first strike with minimal loses (3 ships) and then a full on counterattack with 6 destroyer fleets, 2 ironclad fleets and 9 battleships (3 fleets). If we only use 1 ship, he kills it with 3 or 4 ships, we then kill those 3 or 4 ships and he can counterattack with the whole of his fleet. 

Even with your caravels, I don't think we can expose the majority of his fleet.  I could peal 1 ironclad back if you think it is overkill but the destroyer will be helpful rooting out privateers/subs. Maybe we use just those 3 ships and have your caravels for clean up duty incase of a bad dice roll.

[Woden]

I think I will switch everywhere that can to a builder this next turn and see how many I can get out before Totalitarianism finishes and will have to drop the card, unless I forgo Natural Philosophy for the extra science. Which might be an option for a few turns. With Fascism, it has 2 wild card slots and 1 economic slot. The 2 wild card slots will be taken up by the Oligarchy and Democracy cards, so I have only the 1 economic slot so either Natural Philosophy or Public Works. I also need Ideology after Mobilization for the combined Campus/IZ card. The next GE is a wonder builder (Eiffel) and he will go to the Forbidden City somewhere for the extra wild card slot but that is further down the road.

[ljubljana]

Good point about exposing more than one ship. I guess even with 2-3, he probably will still not have to expose battleships to kill them. But if he leaves his battleships back you can at least kill or heavily injure most of his ICs with the second strike, and hopefully then the battleships will lack shielding.

I think it's fine to drop NatPhil as long as it does not add a turn to Fission, which will probably be the case by the time you get to Conservation. Once we hit Fission, tech rate starts to decrease slightly in importance, since we will definitely hit Rocketry before we have nukes ready to launch.

[ljubljana]

Turn 194, Part 1 - Phoenicia



Some good rolls against Rodeo give us the chance to go with a slightly safer deploy here. Not sure if I have the brainpower to take it right now, though. My paranoid instincts say I need to take another shot to take the last 15 health off the city, but that's probably a bit silly. If my injured single caravel is favored to kill, surely your ironclad fleet can do it guaranteed.

One thing I should be able to do is leave both tiles next to the city open. That way, roland will not be able to block you from taking the city next turn by moving the caravel out, which could be a big deal if we get counterattacked. It does mean the caravel will get a nice hit against one of my frigates, but I was planning on that anyways. Alternatively, if I can leave the pearls open, you can pillage with your yellow IC before taking the city. Idk, I'll think about it and figure something out.

edit: Sigh, the frigate on the pearls does serve an important defensive, GA-protecting purpose though... Without that ship there, if my GA is in the intended spot, he can kill one caravel then get 5 shots at the GA caravel, which may kill. They would also be able to kill one caravel then block the tiles next to the city...

[ljubljana]

Turn 194, Part 2 - Phoenicia

Finally done, and feeling pretty exhausted today both physically and emotionally. Work things, mostly, and pandemic things, nothing related to the game. Hopefully no major blunders arose from this...



WC resolved boringly and predictably. Can't imagine why nobody wanted to send me aid . Actually China voted for that and Indonesia against...guess they are of mixed feelings about us. And the city-state emergency failed, as expected since I couldn't vote for it. But actually I think that's fine, as I'm not sure those give the same +2 strength bonus as military emergencies anyways. According to civwiki, they might just give bonus loyalty in the target former CS and provide benefit to the attacker only if it is successfully liberated. And of course this stupid WC that I blundered into by accident is a major coup for us since all Australia's favor is now rotting in their embassies.



Went with the original deploy, because, well, because I couldn't think of anything on the fly that would keep my GA caravel as secure as this seems to. The frigate fleet on the pearls is a risk, but my guess is the best he can do is kill one melee ship and one frigate and stop there unless he has a really huge number of ships in the fog (>10). It will take a lot to dislodge the GA and that would be the biggest blow they could deal to us. Although I guess if they did that, we could have me take Rodeo and teleport it back, which would be a blow but not a catastrophe. Maybe I made a mistake by occupying the pearls with such a squishy ship then, IDK.

Our options will most likely be to take the city next turn with most of the pillages (you should get the lumbermill either way) or wait a turn and get the pearls and harbor too. Not sure what is best. If he leaves his caravel in the city or moves it to the non-harbor tile I think we capture this turn for sure, but he probably won't do that with squishy frigates for targets. If we miss the pearls, I guess you can kill the city with the yellow IC and then spend a few turns healing there to make up for it, assuming we don't have a swarm of privateers to fight off next turn.

And, well, maybe we won't. He is at -2 from coal now but it will get worse next turn I think since he just ran out this turn. And why trade away all his privateers when he probably does not have the mass in place to kill us and he is just 2 turns from subs? He may still do it since this gives him as big a first strike as he wants, but we might have to fight off a larger swarm augmented with several subs in a few turns instead. At least we will have a scout destroyer at that point, though I think if he commits the full 12 subs he can make here we will still get forced back.



If our ships really do make it down here, I pinned one other target we should think about - if you pillage that canal and can keep it pillaged, it will trap two cities' worth of ship production in that tiny little lake. Amusing and effective if we can pull it off. That is assuming ships can't travel through a pillaged canal, which why would they be able to?



No more easy scouting in the north for Russia, who will have to expose ships just to find out how far back you are. And no attacks from the ice for them either. You might be able to move up quite a lot next turn if he leaves your scouts alive. And I like your idea of sticking to the ice, it is the only direction from which there is even a chance of catching him off guard.

I have 3 little ironclads to contribute now too in addition to the caravel. The one out of Cuneiform will be an Embolon fleet next turn, no less. Not much, but it can plug a gap.



I'm worried about this highlighted P/S. Not sure Russia still has to pay the river penalty movement when crossing a road from my territory into theirs. I think they do, but if not the unit could die which would be a huge shame. The idea was to give them a distraction to chase after and maybe get a strong unit into your territory in case they commit, while hopefully not abandoning my own defense if this is a feint. But I think I overextended and am feeling a little apprehensive.



Caravel for those pirates you saw on your turn. I can reach them unless they go all the way north to the mines Angiers/Tibbet's Brook, but then city defense fire will take care of them. Or they can go all the way to the SW and one of them will be one tile too far away to hit, but either of us can kill the other. But they should be toast if they just pillage stuff, though admittedly very profitable toast.



Idk what's going on with Cuneiform's production queue, with -87 hammers that the game expected me to actually come up with, if that 5t production time is anything to go by. I swapped to a privateer instead to get an invisible scout, and so that it will be easier to re-pillage that coal if needed.

Many of my moves feel pretty rash and foolish today. Or maybe I just feel rash and foolish in general. But it's probably fine, I guess...

edit: Next turn maybe I should start putting hammers into my own Cothon repairs. I would need to fix 3 of them to get another TR but that might doable if Russia heads south with their ships. And my TRs to Thor are still unpillagable for almost 30 more turns.

edit2: Besides, it's not like we have been scouting 8 tiles west of our frontline ships every turn for privateer swarms. If they wanted a first strike against the teeth of our melee ships, they could have taken it at any time, and probably sniped some frigates too. So besides us being physically closer to their production centers, I'm not really sure why this deploy feels so much more dangerous. But ugh, the last time I rationalized something this hard in the interturn, it turned out to be the Battle of (W)odin...

edit3: Another thing I feel deep apprehension about is Russia's faith. We have not killed any Cossacks in a while but they have been buying more this whole time. I think something like 8 corps charging into your core next turn from my captured cities is well within the realm of possibility... You may want to start faith-buying more field cannons down there, just in case. (Probably FC and not P/S as they all have the +5 vs anti-cav promotions and will crush non-corps P/S in the field)

[Woden]

We either will make great gains on the Australian front or see half our ships gone when I open my turn. I think we will be okay, as long as we can give it as good as we take it.

As for Cossacks, I forgot to mention a funny thing I noticed last turn. I was looking to faith buy a P&S to make the one I have a Frigg a corps but I have made them obsolete so I no longer have an anti-cavalry unit available unless I research Chemistry. I am planning on buying a field cannon at Frigg next turn. I think your assessment is right and maybe I should bring my other field cannon home too. I also kept Victor at Frigg to have the double city attacks. It is at least 2 turns until my General is near Frigg again. If he is quick, he may be able to over run my field cannon corps but it would take some effort because for the marsh and hills in the area. I think his best option would be to push on W(O)din and land a bunch of Cossacks around the city. I could kill a few but if he overwhelmed me with them, he could get a few into my interior to cause havoc.

Edit: If you have any spare P&S that could maybe set up behind W(O)din that would be helpful. I don't know if they could make it there is time but williams482 might not be to aggressive here since he has lost a bunch of Cossacks to you. I think between the 2 mountains west of W(O)din would be a good line of defense. Just make sure they are 3 tiles off the coast to prevent battleship fire.