[PB59 Amicalola] The Vespertine Hour(s)

[Amicalola]

T215 - First Wave Preparations
I open the turn to a fun sight:


That's a lot of free build queues!  

We spread Cereal Mills to our first non-HQ city:


I think the most efficient way to spread Cereal Mills is going to be whipping cities for max-overflow the turn before spreading, and overflowing into an executive. Bonus points if the extra food grows the city earlier, like here; very very satisfying.  A similar spread occurred with Constellation (Pindicator's ex-capital) in the south. Weirdly, it's the shitty islands that want Cereal Mills the most, because the core already has so many farms. Perhaps this is an opportunity to replace those with workshops, in time. 

I send Tarkeel this trade offer:


This should let him know to go in next turn. Or at least, that I will do so. Which leads me into the main subject of the turn...

The Invasion - Specifics!
So we're invading literally next turn, which really snuck up on me. Turns out that with railroads and galleons, things move quickly! 

Overall
Here's another shot of Superdeath's territory:


I would say that overall, I have four goals with the first wave. They are:

1. Capture No Handlebars ASAP. The sooner we get the shrine working, the better. 
   
2. Capture islands. They are the only cities that are completely impervious to SD's massive stacks and collateral. 
   
3. Raze other coastal cities, to prevent whips. This goes double for Seether, Superdeath's Heroic Epic city. I would love to keep these, but I think it's too risky. 
   
4. Convince Tarkeel that I am fully committed, so that he will join in properly. 
   

The goals probably look too conservative, but Superdeath's mainland forces are actually quite impressive in sheer bulk. I think trying to hold two places at once with this wave would end in disaster, a bit like Tarkeel's first attack did. The Shrine by far the most important city, so I decided to prioritise that with the landing forces. Then we'll probably try to push inland with tanks, unless something goes very differently to my expectations. 

I decided to attack now, instead of just waiting for tanks, because every turn that I wait is another that Superdeath cranks out rifles/catapults. Maybe just as important, it's a turn that I don't have the Buddhist Shrine. I'm not sure if waiting would have been smarter, but it's interesting. 

The North
On T216, these galleons will begin by razing Seether; that takes Superdeath's HE city out of the fight before he can make any rifles with it. 


Then, on T217, they will split up; some will go north to capture Starset (6 units; cannot whip a rifle until T218), while most will go south to assist in the main attack. I'm a little worried Tarkeel is going to try for Starset, so I sent him a trade of fur/clams. Hopefully he gets the message. 

The South
On T216, these galleons will smash into ChemicalRomance, occupying it.


The transports are waiting an extra turn to pick up all the additional MGs (I was SO glad to have figured this out!), before also leaving port T216. Then. on T217, all ships will advance through ChemicalRomance to dump their units on the tile marked. In total, we should be landing at least 60 troops, including nearly 30 Machine Guns. I think that's enough to make any counter-attack unviable. We'll see if Superdeath does his whole 'spite-whipping thing.'

They will be joined by two of these transports from the south island, who will also raze Tiwanaku along the way.



The third island-transport will raze Paramore, before preparing to land at GunsNRoses.



Stonecity is a puzzle, because I REALLY want it (probably the most valuable non-capital city) for a canal into the inner sea.


However, I can't see any way to hold it from either Donovan Zoi or Superdeath charging south, while also holding the Shrine. I do want to find a way to take this quickly though; perhaps we send reinforcements there after taking NoHandlebars. Or perhaps we just raze it while we wait to take GunsNRoses, and lose the channel. Not really sure what's best.  Edit: I had an idea!! What if I raze Stonecity and resettle a spot 1W of the bananas. Need to find a way to coordinate that though, between Donovan and SD's presumed Big Anger.

In the interest of considering other ideas, I wonder if I should have split the Machine Guns into two groups, and tried to keep both Seether and NoHandlebars. SD probably could have taken at least one back, but maybe I'd have killed enough troops to make the rest of the war easier. 

Superdeath's Assorted Stacks

Overall, I'm not sure whether this will be a success or a disaster. Or whether I've been too pessimistic or optimistic about what I can/can't hold. I am pretty excited though!

[Ginger()]

I'm curious, have you considered or implemented any West Point/Commando Shenanigans?
Good luck fighting the Zerg :P

[Amicalola]

Thanks! I have not, sadly. I did quite a bad job of Great General use this game, really. I used two on units (Medic-3 is good; Morale has done literally nothing ), and then a few on a Heroic Epic city, but nowhere near enough for Commando. Made me realise that's a significant bonus of Aggressive in the late game though, which is interesting. I ended up building West Point at my Moai city (Unravel), for Navigation-II (7-move) transports every 1.5 turns instead. It's strong, but commandos would be really great here.

[Amicalola]

T216 - WAR!
The jig is up; Superdeath realised what's happening. Well, one flaw in my plan is immediately obvious:


Oh yeah, Superdeath can use EP too.  Apparently, through some premonition, he actually figured it out last turn (before I moved into position), because that's when he spent the EP. I must have failed to hide something. D'oh. Anyway, I have one airship in range in the north, and none in the south. Looks like we'll have to do most of our scouting the old fashioned way while they rebase. 

I look around with that airship. Here are the stacks: 

Seether in particular is very heavily garrisoned. That's problematic, but with our bombardment we should still be able to take out a lot of the defenders, and capture it next turn. 


Or so I thought. More on that later... 

Tarkeel hasn't moved anything in, which is very disappointing.  


He did, however, capture an island from Donovan Zoi:


Uh, wrong person Tarkeel!  

But for our purposes, it looks as though SD's moved nearly everything to the north. Unfortunately we still can't really hold anything in the south, but at least the garrisons weren't improved. So we hit our first target:


And burn it. 

Paramore falls next. 


Luckily, those longbows were just too late. 

For my next move, the invasion encounters disaster. Castles don't just reduce Frigate bombardment - they reduce destroyer bombardment too!!!!   Apparently the designers didn't consider oil-powered destroyers to be gunpowder units. Hmph. 


So this requires an immediate change of plans. Obviously, we aren't taking Seether this turn. With Superdeath apparently not fighting Tarkeel, we also have to take on all of his units. Fair enough. I did still do some of the original plan: 



The odds attacking Starset weren't great, even after bombarding. About 70% per attack. We attack regardless: 

  
I was very lucky here; I won five of those 70% battles in a row, and didn't lose a single infantry. I needed something like that, after the other things that have gone wrong. It's the little things that cheer you up, really.  

Since I'm not bombarding or attacking Seether this turn, I had to think about what to do instead. In the end, I gathered my two stacks of ships (minus some transports) and put them on these two tiles:




In theory, these 'fork' NoHandlebars and Seether. They can't actually attack NoHandlebars, but they can land on the signed tile. I guess now we wait and see where Superdeath moves...

I'll do my best to cover the whole war, so these reports might get pretty long for the next little while. Of course, let me know if there are any requests.

[Amicalola]

Ohhh, I've just realised. I think I fundamentally misunderstood how bombardment works. I had thought that castles didn't defend from 'gunpowder' units, as in cannons bombarding for example. And I think that's true. But they're bombarding from the 100% castle defences, not the 40-60% cultural ones, which then gets scaled down in percentage to about half the value. I guess you learn something every day.

[Amicalola]

T217: D-Day
I moved in. Here's the troops that arrived with the first landing:


Here is Superdeath's main stack, although he has a very large garrison in both NoHandlebars and Seether as well. 

Not that much else actually happened this turn, as I couldn't capture any cities. Tarkeel moved in, and faces no resistance:


That's a bit of a shame, I was hoping SD's forces would get split.   I guess it's fair enough to defend your capital first, though. I wonder if I should have targeted Seether first just for that reason...

I rescued the marines from the south, who will assault GunsNRoses (southern island) next turn.

We also will unlock tanks next turn, although won't be able to whip them until the turn after.

[Amicalola]

T218 - No Handlebars
So if you looked at my screenshot yesterday, you might have noticed an issue. I had enough MGs to probably keep my stack alive, but I had no good way to actually assault NoHandlebars in the meantime. I was so convinced I was screwed that I was planning a joke* post about this, perhaps even a meme (the Game of Thrones 'kinda forgot [to bring attacking units]' was on the shortlist). I've never made a meme before, so God knows what would have come out the other side. Luckily, I don't have to subject you to that, because Superdeath did something I really didn't expect:

 

NoHandlebards was completely empty! After capturing, it kept the forge and market, although weirdly not the granary. I guess I'll take it. The resistance is only four turns, which must be because the population is so low! I always thought that was based on culture, but apparently not. Guess I'm not complaining.  



I moved the rest of the stack into NoHandlebars. We absolutely cannot afford to lose this now, and with the additional hill bonus I don't think we will.



Here's his stack (mostly consolidated now, other than Seether defenders):


What we do from here depends a bit on Superdeath, but my guess is "hunker down and wait for the 2nd wave." Against all my expectations, the first wave has achieved nearly all of it's goal now. Seether is the black mark against my efforts, but NoHandlebars was definitely more important. 


Speaking of that second wave, it's in the oven.




In the south, things move quicker than I expected. We assault GunsNRoses first, losing an infantry to kill 4 defenders:


I completely forgot to bombard first.  In my defence, these turns are very busy/exciting. 

Because we only lost 1 infantry, I was able to use a random Oromo to take the city. That meant I was also able to change plans with another group of infantry (intended for NoHandlebars) to assault StoneCity instead, defended by a pikeman. Only one of the infantry could actually attack, as the rest were unloaded+loaded, so this was a nervous roll:


But we won! The ship had just enough movement to unload them all in StoneCity. 


That was a fortunate series of events, really.  Amazing how much difference bringing that random extra Oromo made. I'm not sure if keeping this is too greedy; my thinking is that Superdeath seems to be focusing on his north, and non-knight units are 3 turns away (even knights are 2), so I might get away with it. We'll see! 


Tarkeel advanced too, and captured 30s2Mars. 



It looks like he's also going to take these two cities next turn. I wonder if SD will let him keep them. 




Oh, and this turn we finally reached top power!  


I wonder if we can keep it until the game ends. I also finally have enough airships to keep an eye on the whole battlefield, which is really nice. Definitely a learning experience there. 


It looks to me like Piccadilly is approaching an unassailable tech lead, so I sent around 'stop trading with Piccadilly' offer to nearly everyone this turn. It probably makes very little difference, but it would be irresponsible not to try. I caught Mig when he relogged, and he accepted the deal, so that's a least two players done (Mig + Myself). Hopefully he's thinking along the same lines as me: "2nd and 3rd should work together against 1st." His deal included an extra fish/fish, to get that message across. 

The other diplomacy I've been doing is grain trades for 3gpt apiece, mostly with Miguelito and Charriu - Cereal Mills is up to 15 food now. I'm working on spreading it to islands now that it's in a decent number of mainland cities too. Spreading it to SD's territory is going to be tricky/interesting. Not sure how interesting 'corporate-executive logistics' are to read about though.

[El Grillo]

Looks like smooth sailing so far, and that is one hell of a shrine! As to your last paragraph, I hadn’t thought about it before but a food corp is a great way to shorten the payback horizon for newly conquered whipped-down cities with a bunch of developed tiles to grow onto, if you can make the executive transport logistics work.

[Amicalola]

Looks like smooth sailing so far, and that is one hell of a shrine! As to your last paragraph, I hadn’t thought about it before but a food corp is a great way to shorten the payback horizon for newly conquered whipped-down cities with a bunch of developed tiles to grow onto, if you can make the executive transport logistics work.

Imagine growing your cities by working tiles.  

 
With Cereal Mills this city would be at +16 food, or growing *every turn* with the granary. And if we get the clam, we shoot up to +19 food, for... zero functional difference. Wow. Ok, maybe corporations are a little dumb. 

But that does make me realise how important getting corps in these cities ASAP is going to be. I think I'll try to send a boatload of 3-4 and spread them all on the same turn on the Superdeath-mainland. It's the islands that are super annoying, because they're a guaranteed 2-turn commitment of executives. That includes the home islands too, which is already slowing the spread. Balance sucks.

The Buddhist shrine shall fund my dystopia to new heights. With a bank, it funds 3.5 corporation spreads per turn!

[Ginger()]

Hell yeah, one population cities with 16 food and top power  
All you need is some soylent green and it'll be the perfect horror of humanity.

Thinking long term though, aside from the joys of conquering the backward continents, how do you manage to defeat both Picc and Mig? I imagine your research has not improved at the Kremlin's loving hands, so what do you need to have happen to make your victory possible? Is Domination possible in your mind? If not, how will you get the space ship?  
Conquests with Mills-boosted integration, how far will that carry you? Sorry if this is raining on your glorious parade  (it is glorious)