[pb46 spoilers] Hitru lurks again

[Old Harry]

Turn 192

Intel in. Plans start to form.


So what do we want on our boats? The North fleet has 2 galleons, Mid and South have 8 galleons and 2 caravels that we need to share out.

The locations marked "Hidden?" rely on us killing boats and occasionally cities.

[thestick]

When does the operation begin?

[Old Harry]

Turn 194

When does the operation begin?

This turn was t0. Next turn there will be blood. The turn after there will be more blood. Then I'm expecting blood on an ongoing basis until the game gets called. The Indian defences over here have been gradually beefed up, so it's possible we won't burn all the cities we hoped to and that a large proportion of the blood will be ours, but what can you do, eh?

This is the whole of the battlefield - airship visibility coming in very handy.


And this is just the northern half. We've put all our eggs in the naval-domination basket, if that allows us to hold Rusten's far larger army at bay then we're going to be very happy. He's probably seen about 10 of our frigates and ships of the line, so when 50 emerge from the fog next turn I hope he'll be surprised.


In economic news we finally built Wall Street in Init Cache for an extra 100gpt and were very pleasantly surprised by how much coal we have. This helps out the heroic epic city nicely. I thought the +1 hammer to mines from railroad got removed, but a tooltip just suggested it, so that'll boost production too.


Demos and power. Tech-wise we're down Assembly Line, Democracy and Railroad, but up Sci Meth, Mil Sci and Physics. Dark Savant's stout defence couldn't stand up to the power of infantry, so Rusten has more cities coming online in the next ten turns and he's already teching faster than us, so if we don't do something Rusten will win the race to destroyers and that's game over. We're finally top power again (for one turn) and we're saving cash for some last-minute unit upgrades next turn.

[Hollybombay]

Before the big war turn, do you guys have an accurate city count for each player alive? Kinda curious

[Old Harry]

Unfortunately not.

[Hitru]

Logged in to joint war vs Rusten offer from Commodore, which I accepted. Lets see if we can make something happen here. We will play actual turn as soon as possible but there should be some blood in the next coming turns.

[Katinka]

[Old Harry]

Turn 195

The final war starts. This chariot withdraws from this fight so gets deleted.


Then we kill all of Rusten's scouting privateers.


Burn a city.


And line up to hit some more cities next turn. Unfortunately with drafted infantry Rusten can probably hold us somewhat at arms length. We don't really have enough galleons and land units to break through, unless he leaves us a soft spot.


This is our other main target for next turn, along with the combat log for this turn.


Demos and power. We're still #1 power and with that city raze we hit #1 food as well.

[Old Harry]

Turn 196

Commodore took three Indian cities and only kept two of them. I hope that raze was a tactical decision - I'm concerned that Com might be happy with establishing a nice border and will offer Rusten peace. Dark Savant's territory seems pretty empty and what units Rusten does have there are pretty bashed up, so I feel like he should press the attack. We stationed a bunch of airships in his borders to help out if he does. On the (hugely overpowered) subject of airships we're up to 19 now, and we're due to complete another 15 over the next couple of turns which seems a lot, but will only fill eight cities. The problem we face is that it's hard to get them in range of targets now that we've scoffed the low-hanging fruit. For example, this city is exactly one tile too far away to be of any use whatsoever. Damn you TBW!


Rusten has boats in a couple of TBWs other cities, blocking our airships from hitting his mainland, so we asked TBW to stop trading with India. There's no particular reason he should take this, but hopefully he'll at least send a counter offer.


Anyway, onto the fighting: Rusten has covered his roads with enough units that it'd take 3-4 commandos to get Addis. So we just burn Lardo. Then we move our boats down to fork Adwa and Plesiosaurus.


Up north I wanted to keep Virginia Ham to let us hit Lonzino next turn. However the cuirassier that took the city got enough xp to go commando next turn, so we don't want Rusten to kill it, so we covered it with a rifle and burnt the city in the hope that Rusten won't empty Frikandel just to kill a couple of units (we only have one healthy attacker that can hit Frikandel, but he doesn't know that), so hopefully the cuir will survive.

The island behind the dialog box is a target too - we can hit it t199ish, but Commodore should beat us to it - it's right on his coast. However our best return on investment might be to push our boats down Rusten's east coast as quick as we can, forcing him to draft, blockading his ports and possibly burning a few more cities.


Demos and power. Rusten is still in the driving seat for GNP and MFG (his factories are starting to kick in now) but Scientific Method (is he heading to Physics for airships?) will obsolete his monasteries and cut the beakers and gold he's making a bit. Unfortunately the Apostolic Palace hammers will still apply, but I'm just really happy he's not beelining destroyers.   Edit: Apparently Physics is needed for Artillery, so he is. Dammit. 

[Old Harry]

Turn 197

A mistake! Rusten killed the commando cuir but didn't reinforce Frikandel. It takes two cavalry to beat the formation urruku pike (one killed, the other deleted) but we're happy to burn the city.


Our western fleet decides that the pickings in the mid-lattitudes aren't appetizing enough so move further south meaning we have 7 commandos and 7 hitters that can go for Matara or Massawa next turn, with 2 of those commandos and 5 of the hitters in range of Mullet if we think we can take out two coastal cities. Brilliantly TBW took up our offer last turn and closed borders with Rusten, so four airships can help us with Massawa. Porpoise (Rusten's Forbidden Palace city) is a high priority to damage his economy. Colossal Squid and any other cities hidden in the fog would also be nice to destroy.


Over in the east Commodore faces a tough job to make any further progress. Rusten still has a lot of power over here that I hadn't seen. We have a few airships which will try to help out where they can.

Note the convoy of boats heading towards the NW, probably to address our navy. We've got a good 3-5 turns before they meet us, so we'll try to do as much damage as possible in that time.


This overview map might help you visualise the logistics a bit better. Most of the signs are accurate for defenders, 0 means the city was empty last time we checked. So far we've only burnt four cities (the red crosses), while Com has taken 4 and burnt 1 (green crosses). Our northern fleet now totally lacks units, so it's galleon is just to scare Rusten into drafting while the other boats pillage and blockade wherever they can. Any further progress in this war is going to be made down south: Massawa and Mullet give us access to Rusten's western core, but it's got to be pretty well defended by next turn, so the temptation is to try to get around the south coast where there are lots more cities to hit... I'm telling myself that we're just waiting for the right opportunity, but [PB43 spoiler]

we could be JR4ing things up.

Demos and power. Even with burnt cities and drafting hard, Rusten's (Free Speech and monk wonder powered) GNP is still way ahead of ours, and his factories are really making the MFG difference apparent. We just need to keep on breaking stuff until our population lead starts to tell.