[SPOILERS] Woden and ljubljana like boats

[Kaiser]

You should summon @thrawn for this, I will be lurking or even roll a map for you guys

[williams482]

Would that have made a difference?

Let me answer this one real quick: Yes. 

Diomede only worked out for me because I was able to break through and wrap around in the first two turns before Woden could fully catch up to me (and worked out so well because I broke through on that very first turn). Without that first breakthrough I may have been able to grind through your caravels quickly enough to pull it off on turn two, but definitely not with a carpet of scouts providing +6 strength to all your units, gumming up otherwise cleared tiles, and forcing me to burn valuable attacks to clear them. Woden 100% would have caught up and slammed into my rear, my one huge edge in ship speed would have been totally neutralized, and you two would have gone all Hannibal on my now smaller, weaker, and totally surrounded fleet. 

My thread would have been overwhelmed with incandescent rage at that stupidity of Civ VI accidentally allowing such a ridiculous but powerful tactic, but you would have been the deserving winner for identifying and using it in a critical spot. And I suppose that would have been a cruelly poetic bookend to Chevalier's successful galley spam defense 100 turns earlier.

(Betcha you're regretting revealing this one to the world right ahead of another game, eh? I'm of half a mind to suggest trying to ban it somehow!)

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Would that have made a difference?

My thread would have been overwhelmed with incandescent rage at that stupidity of Civ VI accidentally allowing such a ridiculous but powerful tactic, but you would have been the deserving winner for identifying and using it in a critical spot. And I suppose that would have been a cruelly poetic bookend to Chevalier's successful galley spam defense 100 turns earlier.

(Betcha you're regretting revealing this one to the world right ahead of another game, eh? I'm of half a mind to suggest trying to ban it somehow!)

Actually, I mentioned in my thread that I had "a few more tricks up my sleeve" to deal with the jongs if galley spam didn't work. One tactic that I did consider and test was embarking land units to beef up my galley defenses in the chokes. It worked fairly well and made it more difficult for sub's jongs to one-shot the galleys, but the limiting factor was build queues - Australia only had one inland build queue and Marco stubbornly refused to settle most of hte cities I pinned for him (or, indeed, to build settlers, or to spread Work Ethic and work towards Monumentality himself...-sigh-), so there was no space to churn out cheap warriors or scouts for defensive purposes. So I shelved the idea for a later time.

[ljubljana]

(Betcha you're regretting revealing this one to the world right ahead of another game, eh? I'm of half a mind to suggest trying to ban it somehow!)

Actually, I would absolutely support a pre-emptive ban on this one. Way too unfun and immersion-breaking and I have a bad feeling it would make a real difference in most post-caravel naval engagements...

It worked fairly well and made it more difficult for sub's jongs to one-shot the galley

Wait, does this work? I was under the impression support bonuses only added to defense against melee attacks....if it helps against frigates as well, that's even more reason to consider a ban

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

It seemed to! Might have been a desperately hopeful hallucination, or maybe I just intended it to stop some of Sub's supporting galleys.

In the end it was really only useful i nthat specific scenario - the shuffled tech putting Compass way after Mercenaries, leading to Jongs vulnerable to galley-swarm blocking. (Actually, upon reflection, there's a case to be made that the lack of Compass really helped Sub more than it protected us. Had I been able to enter open water, my galleys could have swarmed him to death instead of just body-blocking, while the constricted shallow water sailing let him concentrate his jongs' ranged power while letting him only get attacked by one or two weak galleys at a time).

[suboptimal]

My inability to consistently one-shot galleys was because the CS difference was "only" 30. The damage distribution is a normal distribution curve so you need a CS difference of 36 to guarantee a one-shot. IIRC I was one-shotting somewhere around 1/3 to 1/2 of the galleys I targeted. I may still have the saves and can load one up to look.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I remember things really took a turn for the worse once you started getting promotions - the added CS shot you up into consistent 1-shot territory, and I hadn't bothered to run any tests long enough to account for that. That was when our defense outside Rodeo really crumbled.

[suboptimal]

Yeah....you were still able to produce galleys faster that I could kill them, though. I lost count as to how many actually went to the bottom but it was a large-ish number.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Ha, yeah, my analysis pre-jongs was:

Okay, I ran some tests in a duel map and I think we should be okay, barring a worst case scenario.

...

I can replace my galleys far, far easier than suboptimal can replace his jongs. If I lose, say, 4 galleys for every jong sunk - well, that sucks. BUT Galleys effectively cost 32.5 production for me, to Jongs' 300 production for Suboptimal until he gets alllll the way to Exploration, wherever that is. I figure if we face the early scenario, we'll be fighting about 6 jongs. If we face the middle scenario, 10-12. That'd be bad but I have more time to prepare. ANyway, tyhe point is, once suboptimal has his fighting edge worn down a bit, then he'll eventually hit critical mass and be unable to sink a galley a turn because his jongs will be too injured or retreating ot heal. At that point, unless he flees, he'll go all at once. 

Bottom line for jong attack: I will certainly lose Shikishima and Vladimir. However, that should be all I lose, and frankly, both cities effectively cost nothing! I spent faith to found Vladimir, about 4 turn's worth. Both contribute almost nothing in terms of production or research to the empire, they're more colonial outposts. The Russian core will remain entirely intact, because I don't think suboptimal has the force to hack through the fucking locust swarm of galleys I plan to hurl in his face.

...

This all depends on me building galleys until the end of time, but guess what? With Conscription, galleys are free. We'll put so many hulls in the water a warrior could walk to You Can Call Me Al over a bridge of boats by the time I'm done.