[PB79] MirOh No, what am I doing?

[Mjmd]

1) Ya I think its the thing to do. Good call. I should note Cristo opens up switching around later, but with him having Kremlin you need some way to even things up.
2) With mining inc yes. Without mostly.
3) Public transportation is last resort and it depends what tiles you would lose in said city. I was missing 3 health resources in PB75 so built more than I ever had before and also eventually switched to environmentalism in order to whip nukes. In this case you want to win before nukes so don't worry too much about as that is production that could be a unit!

4) Move most of your units west at this point. If Coldrain or Gira invades then they are just giving the game to Xist. This was a hard lesson for me to learn is when to just give up defense elsewhere.
5) Try to get both on YOUR side, or at least peaceful.

[Miro]

Great, done!

Also xist just upgraded 5 Galleons (north, -775g) to Transports and 10 Infantry + 5 Cannons left his stack and (I assume) loaded into them while his north navy pushed towards the edge of the cultural border again.

He's been threatening to invade north for a while now, but now that he has Combustion, I don't know if he just made a few Destroyers to help him push through my north navy when I close the gap or if he's just feinting threatening to keep me honest. I upgraded 2 SoLs to Destroyers, figure that should be enough to keep him from invading from that route. If he tries to go through Gira's waters, I might DoW and try to snipe the Transports before he has a chance to take an island.

[Miro]

T228 Update:

Summary:

• xist may want a culture victory, or just wants to take more border tiles
  
• My production >> xist's production
  
• I'm plotting war
  
• T229 coldrain finishes Assembly Line and Gira finishes Combustion
  

Xist culture/tech:

So I don't really know a lot about culture victories and the culture slider, but xist just grabbed Drama and built up an 8,125g bank. (xist does not have Music)
I stopped teching, too, for fear of him upgrading his entire navy at once and going to war. I have a 5K - 6K bank.
xist's CC gives his cities +54 culture per turn.



Any idea of a culture victory seems very far off right now, but I'm watching you, Wazowski.

Using culture to grab more tiles at our border is pretty nasty.
I placed my CC Exec at my north-most xist-border city (Mediolanum) a while ago to help out.

Production History:
~T190: xist founds Creative Construction
T200: xist researches Assembly Line
~T203: Miro founds Mining Inc
T216: Miro researches Assembly Line and enters Golden Age
T217: xist enters Golden Age
T224: Mining Inc has spread to all of Miro's cities (+1 CC city)
T226: xist still has 4 islands, 1 mainland city without CC
T228: Miro has Factories in 100% of cities, Coal Plants in ~75% of cities.

I'm not counting xist's Factories, but his production is way lower than mine even though he has a higher population.
Xist founded The Pentagon on T227 or T228, I was ~5T away. I can't keep up with that massive Carthage capital.

But check out the production chart:


Lordddd! It's higher now than it was for most of the last GA. Makes a guy think... about war...

War Plans:

I'm guessing xist is still building Factories + Coal Plants now, so hitting him in transition could be really strong.
That's why I don't want to wait for Tanks (~15T) and want to spend my 5K - 6K bank now to upgrade my navy and Riflemen, then try to raze some of xist's cities.
I might bail on the plan and go for Tanks based on what I see from xist, but right now I'm 100% building military and the rest of my Coal Plants.
Xist's damned flying drones circling my cities makes it hard to hide my forces. I had to make a map to ID tiles I can use to hide my army from the blimps.



I could hide some forces in [A] 2T before I want to invade, then use Workers to add railroads through NA territory to invade xist's weak side. (coldrain already built most railroads I'd need)
Also just noticed that a xist blimp could spot [B], but not the southern-most tile in the redzone, so my land invasion force will 1T invade from that southern tile to avoid sight.

I thought about sending some Transports through NA waters, too, but even if NA keeps our borders open, xist's blimps might ID them fast enough to pick 'em off.
I don't want to do a big land invasion - maybe I'd aim for the closest xist city at our border, but otherwise most of my army would play defense at xist's border while my navy and Transports do all the work.
I'll count my Drydocks later. I believe I have 10 - 12 total and am producing Destroyers like crazy.

I'll try a navy invasion in both the north and south, so I'll hit up Gira and coldrain at some point to hopefully give them a city while keeping them off of me.
I don't a war ETA right now, I'll come up with one over the weekend.

Here's my city production and total army:





Dems:


Questions:

(Q1): Why is going to war before Tanks definitely the right move?
(Q2): How much do you love going to war before Tanks?
(Q3): Why are Tanks lame as shit?

(Real Question): In MP, are naval invasions disproportionately stronger than army invasions? I just see xist's 70 - 100 army stack and I basically don't care about it. But loaded Galleons/Transports in FoW are scary AF. I've spent all game with only a few Galleys, so I'm happy to finally have some scary loaded Transports of my own.

[greenline]

Naval invasions in MP have a significant mobility advantage over land attacks once galleons or better ships are unlocked. Tanks / horse are 2 moves in enemy territory. Galleons are minimum five, transports seven, which means you can fork and pressure many more cities. This isn't an unbeatable advantage, though. Drafted PRO gunpowder units shuffled between cities can stymie units attacking off ships, since the only way to collateral off ships is with Cho-Ko-Nus.

I hope the design of the map is not making dealing with naval attacks overwhelming.

[Mjmd]

Q0) clarification on "hit up Gira and Coldrain". I'm hoping this means send diplo to either help or stay out of the way. Again, as 2nd place just abandon those borders of anything relevant. This was a tough lesson for me to learn, but MOST people realize they need the 2nd to have a devastating war with first for them to have a chance. If you start winning you might need to worry, but for now don't worry about it. This is in large part how I was able to beat Plemo down in PB66. I dedicated my all to him and he at least vaguely had to keep other players honest. We won't talk about the result to me in that game. Although looking at the graphs, people may be forgetting he has Kremlin (as are you when you talk about being ahead in production, that is uncertain).

Q1 / Q2 /Q3 ) You don't need tanks to navally invade and that is where I think your main assaults should be. They help (as do marines), but you can just land a stack on a hill / forest of an island first. To this effect while you might build transports for north and south focus primary on one direction and only LOAD one direction (probably south?). This is going to be a grinding war and ports are the key metric. I would like to wait for airships of your own for vision. With fast ships vision is super important. Will also give you time to build more forces. You need to keep the land armies honest, but collateral is SUCH A BIG DEAL that invading against a slightly smaller stack is pretty hard (slightly being key here, but if you are at at 80 units and he is at 100 that is fine; you can also keep some of yours in range but garrisoning port cities).

Q4) Don't worry about cultural victory. He is so far away. You hope he dedicates resources to.
Q5) Rereading forgot about initial plan. With airships sneak attacks are MUCH harder. I'm not saying don't do it, but you won't know his garrisons over there either until your own airships. Does Coldrain have open borders? This might impact how many forces you can strip for going west, but you have some depth over there.

[Miro]

Naval invasions in MP have a significant mobility advantage over land attacks once galleons or better ships are unlocked. Tanks / horse are 2 moves in enemy territory. Galleons are minimum five, transports seven, which means you can fork and pressure many more cities. This isn't an unbeatable advantage, though. Drafted PRO gunpowder units shuffled between cities can stymie units attacking off ships, since the only way to collateral off ships is with Cho-Ko-Nus.

I hope the design of the map is not making dealing with naval attacks overwhelming.

Hmmm the 2-move units threatening multiple cities and threatening to 2-move hit a city on the turn you DoW is very scary, you're right.
Maybe I just feel this secure now because of railroads and the narrow land borders. Xist trying to culturally grab tiles so he can 1T invade some of my cities is a good play and keeps armies relevant.

I like the map a lot! Mjmd helping me recognize navy's importance just in time (with Galleys in Rome war and Frigates + SoL in Carthage + NA vs China war) played a big part in succeeding/surviving the way I did.
Mjmd told me navy was important, but as Leonard Nimoy reminds us, "It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls."
Seeing it firsthand was a great learning experience. I think coldrain and xist both assumed I had more navy than I had, so they didn't push as hard as they could have and they could have threatened a few more cities.

I also didn't realize until mid-war that xist wasn't even close to having Rifling. His navy + Knights + Grenadiers were plenty strong and accessible much sooner by ignoring Rifling.

Q0) clarification on "hit up Gira and Coldrain". I'm hoping this means send diplo to either help or stay out of the way. Again, as 2nd place just abandon those borders of anything relevant. This was a tough lesson for me to learn, but MOST people realize they need the 2nd to have a devastating war with first for them to have a chance. If you start winning you might need to worry, but for now don't worry about it. This is in large part how I was able to beat Plemo down in PB66. I dedicated my all to him and he at least vaguely had to keep other players honest. We won't talk about the result to me in that game. Although looking at the graphs, people may be forgetting he has Kremlin (as are you when you talk about being ahead in production, that is uncertain).

Q1 / Q2 /Q3 ) You don't need tanks to navally invade and that is where I think your main assaults should be. They help (as do marines), but you can just land a stack on a hill / forest of an island first. To this effect while you might build transports for north and south focus primary on one direction and only LOAD one direction (probably south?). This is going to be a grinding war and ports are the key metric. I would like to wait for airships of your own for vision. With fast ships vision is super important. Will also give you time to build more forces. You need to keep the land armies honest, but collateral is SUCH A BIG DEAL that invading against a slightly smaller stack is pretty hard (slightly being key here, but if you are at at 80 units and he is at 100 that is fine; you can also keep some of yours in range but garrisoning port cities).

Q4) Don't worry about cultural victory. He is so far away. You hope he dedicates resources to.
Q5)  Rereading forgot about initial plan. With airships sneak attacks are MUCH harder. I'm not saying don't do it, but you won't know his garrisons over there either until your own airships. Does Coldrain have open borders? This might impact how many forces you can strip for going west, but you have some depth over there.

Q0) Yeah I'm leaving just a little in my northeastern coastal city in case the graphs make Gira (former bestie) think I'm 1st and he wants to pick off a city. By "Hit up gira and coldrain" I meant send them a message like, "I declare war on xist, you get Rice + Iron" or whichever resources are in xist's western-most city so coldrain can settle a new city there if he likes.
Or "I declare war on xist, I trade you Fish, you trade me Fish." I'd love it if they help in the war, but I'm not counting on it.
I might ask Gira to invade some islands with the "you get resource + resource" to mean he takes that city while I try to hit other cities.
Coldrain probably doesn't want to join the war, but maybe he's still mad at xist. Part of their peace deal might have included DoWing me, so he might have just done it to honor the deal but still hates xist more than me. I can dream!

Q123) That's pretty much what I'm doing with my cities. I'm also starting to move a bunch of random units around in case xist is keeping track of what's in each city to gauge army size/movements. I can check his single stack whenever I like, but he's gotta do some homework if he wants to know what I have. "But he can just use the military advisor screen to see the sum..." shhh.

Q5) I checked his western garrisons a few turns ago with my Spy, but yeah he can change it up pretty quickly. Yes, all nations have open borders with each other except me vs xist.

[Mjmd]

Q5) I keep forgetting you guys have spies on. He may not have an airship on that border yet. Did you spy see any airships on that border? I know I wouldn't have prioritized.

[Miro]

Q5) I keep forgetting you guys have spies on. He may not have an airship on that border yet. Did you spy see any airships on that border? I know I wouldn't have prioritized.

He didn't have any airships on his western border. I marked down what he had, but don't remember off the top of my head. 3-4 Muskets at each of his 2 western-most cities.

But if he does add an airship to that border I'll be using the southern-most red zone tile I mentioned earlier. (I believe) no xist airship can scout that tile.

[Miro]

T229:

Ok, I thought it over and I'm not going to plot war anymore.
Mainly because I'm already in a war.





The fuck? Xist has 7,243g with Biology 1T away, so he didn't upgrade army.

He hit my northern navy (unupgraded - damn, I was 1T away from starting it).





I have 7,202g. It would cost -4,400g to upgrade my 14 north ships to Destroyers.
I have 1 Destroyer in range to hit xist's stack for a little value, I'll probably go for it while upgrading some north ships.

Gira closed borders with me, too. He's definitely on xist's side, so there goes the plan I had earlier.
Not sure if I have to DoW Gira to attack xist's stack when it's at the edge of Gira's waters even if my unit wouldn't clear xist's stack and enter Gira's waters.

Gonna go buy my niece a Bluey present, then come back and prepare for war.

[Mjmd]

Ouch. Ya that stack was WAY too far forward with how fast ships move in this age. At least without airship vision. I was / am planning to write a naval combat guide for the late game here, but I was going to wait until pre battleships as that and nukes were my main topic. But how fast ships can move vs other eras along with vision are huge factors to get used to. This is the problem with letting non green greens in these type of games. But ya time to see what kind of fight you can put up.

Send Gira fish for fish. He can SEE what happened, so he shouldn't be antagonistic at least. For some reason (IE they are both orange), I thought Diomede belonged to Xist this whole time.

Love Bluey as a parent of 3. Has some good parent humor / emotion in there. Watched 3 episodes tonight with my kids in fact.