Gavagai climbs the chaos ladder

[Qgqqqqq]

A decent reason I don't reply is because my browser doesn't load your pictures without a few additional steps.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

In the modern naval conflicts with destroyers, what is the major component in victory when sides have relative parity? How much is there of a "defender's bonus" -- or is there pretty much full vision of stacks, and everything is about positioning? Never really explored the finer aspects of this...

[Gavagai]

The big news of the turn is that Bangalore is about to fall. But this (and everything else war-related) is completely insignificant compared to what I am about to show you.

Piccadilly got a Great Artist in Agra. And he already has a settler ready.

He can bomb the Oil tile here and fuck up my entire north, eliminating the progress I achieved in my last campaign. But at least, this tile is razeable. The alternative, however, is much worse.

A bomb on the Pig tile will eliminate half of the conquests I made in our very first war and a significant chank of my economy - look at all these towns. Vijablahblah will be completely swamped by his culture and very difficult to hold. And if he takes it, I might be forced to retreat to my very old borders.
The funny thing is - I knew about culture bombs, I am not an idiot. But I figured he had no source of artist points. He is in slavery since our war. No wonders, national or global. India, so no weirdness from uniques. No Aesthetics, so no building that would enable artist specialists.
The only way it could happen is that when he was in caste during his first golden age million years ago, he for SOME FUCKING REASON ran artists in Agra. The chance to get an artist must have been infinitismall but here we are. In my civ career this is the most brutal RNG bullshit I ever experienced because it could just lose me the game on spot. The situation with Piccadilly has become massively more complicated and it unravels my entire strategy for this war because the plan was to put maximum pressure on Mig to knock him out and how can I put "maximum pressure" when I need my army here?
Sorry General and sorry all but I am in no mood for talking and it will persist for some time.

[Gavagai]

In the modern naval conflicts with destroyers, what is the major component in victory when sides have relative parity? How much is there of a "defender's bonus" -- or is there pretty much full vision of stacks, and everything is about positioning? Never really explored the finer aspects of this...

The fundamentals are the same as in civ combat more general - you want to meet the enemy's SoD with a bigger SOD of your own. However, tactics and positioning become much more pronounced because both your stacks are incredibly mobile. Like, think of fighting in neutral territory where every single tile is railroaded. There are many reasonable options concerning how to position your forces, and lots of reasonable responses by your opponent, so combat becomes much more chaotic and less predictable. There is more room for creativity also.
The defender has both advantages and disadvantages. The biggest disadvantage is that it is usually the defender who has to attack: the attacker wants escort transports to the defender's territory, and the defender wants to stop those transports, this is what naval combat is usually about, with rare exceptions. It means that at some point the defender would need to hit the incoming stack and the attacker would (in many cases) enjoy the coastal defense bonus. Battleships introduce collateral and change the dynamics decisively because now you actually want to be the one making the hit. This is why I value Battleships in this war so highly.
But the defender has other advantages even besides Battleships. One is vision. It is not just that combat takes place in the defender's territorial waters, it is that it takes place within the range of the defender's airships. Even when the attacker has airships of his own, they do not necessarily have enough reach: in this war, Commodore is in fact unable to see many important tiles in my territory - the fact which I exploited multiple times. Mig does not even have Airships at all, so he was forced to wander into my waters blindly and suffered a lot of losses because of that. Later on, Carriers will make things for the attacker somewhat easier.
Another advantage the defender has is that he can hide his ships back into the ports after they attack, so he can take battles without concerning himself with retaliation. This was another advantage I exploited a lot. This is especially good when you have Battleships which have excellent odds when attacking Destroyers. If Commodore's Bandit 1 would want to keep chilling right next to my ports, as it has been doing before, I'll be able to just chip away Destroyers every turn with impunity. (These considerations, of course, are true for naval combat of earlier eras but older navies have very few movement points and only if your opponent is very brazen they would be able to attack and go back to port on the same turn).

[Gavagai]

Meanwhile, Mig delayed the game for three days by not playing in his window and putting everyone who is supposed to play after him on hold. He actually caused the entire Evil Coalition to miss their turn yesterday when he missed his window and none of the others cared enough to organize an extension. Only post-factum he explained he was too tired to play.
Some time ago when Plemo similarly missed his window, Commodore protested against the unsolicited extension, implicitly suggesting that his war opponent should just miss his turn. Surprisingly, this time he did not protest against a reload, even though no one asked for it (or for an extension earlier). He generally seemed unusually unbothered by the delay only meekly asking Mig about his whereabouts in tech thread on the second day of his absence.
I do not have a problem with any of it per se, but my mind keeps going back to an earlier episode when Plemo asked for a twelve hours extension because he was too tired to play (pretty much the same excuse Mig gave) - and in response some of the players posted in tech thread that they do not consider it a good reason to extend. In my memory, it was the first time in RB history when there was someone protesting against an extension request. There is a very obvious double standard here and once you combine it with the way Commodore harrassed Plemo with obviously pointless wars in-game (to the great detriment of his own civ) it starts to look really bad. I am greatly bothered by what is going on and I hope I am not the only one.
But enough of that. There have been events in the game since I last reported.

Western front. I captured Mirror World from Mig. It was defended by three MGs which would have been a challenge for Infantry. I now have Tanks though. I offered Mig peace for two thousand gold (payable by him) ramping up pressure both militarily and diplomatically. I will accept any reasonable peace offer though. If he refuses, I will keep pushing further West.

Mig's main fleet is lurking to the south with Pindicator going to join him. This is not good - together they will have more ships than me. It will be difficult for them to coordinate though.

Southern front. I eliminated Bandit 2 - 18 Destroyers gone at the cost of 5. That's the power of Battleships.

Bandit 3 is now the only major force Commodore has in the South and I am not sure I should even bother with it.

Eastern front. Commodore landed a lot of units near Bangalore. I expect the city to fall this turn but hope to inflict significant attrition. He Commodore's expeditionary force gets weakened, it will give me a window to get active against Piccadilly.

Piccadilly's situation. In the north, I can deal with Culture Bomb on the post hoc basis but here I need to be proactive. I will need to raze Bombay, Ahmedabad, and Agra and settle buffer cities one east of pigs and on a hill 1SW of Ahmedabad. After that the best he would be able to do with his Artist is to flip one of my buffer cities and restore the current status quo - something I can leave with.

 Demos. The power gap between me and Commodore becomes wider every turn. If not for Piccadilly's Artist I'd say I am winning - and very confidently so. The Artist, however, keeps the situation complicated.

[Gavagai]

Western front. I will receive reinforcements here next turn and move on to the next island the turn after next. At that point, I don't get why Mig is still in this war: things can only get worse for him from now on. I wonder at which point he will realize others just use him as a meat shield.

Southern front. Bandit 3 is slowly wandering away, I will probably leave it be.

Eastern front. Bangalore still stands somehow but Commodore is bringing in reinforcements. I assume he has cannons there, so that must be it for Bangalore.
Interestingly, Commodore is very cautious with his land units while he throws away his naval units as if it was nothing. Just this turn he sacrificed two Destroyers to pillage fishing nets near one of my cities. And I am not even talking about Bandit 2 which was pretty much left to die, as is Bandit 3 now if I cared to chase it.

North-Eastern front. The stack you see is all I was able to scramble for the strike against Bombay. Looks pathetic and I am not sure I can send off even these units to wonder in the hostile territory for a few turns. I think I will have to abandon my initial plan and go with Plan B instead.
Plan B is to avoid venturing into Piccadilly's heartland and just settle 1S from my stack. It should leave no valid spot for Piccadilly to settle in this area but creates a permanent weakness in my position. The city will be on the flatland and Piccadilly will be able to fork it and Vijayanagara. He can easily assemble something like 50 Rifles, so even for my army it will not be trivial to defend both cities while also maintaining coastal defense against Commodore. My hope is that it takes slow for Piccadilly to concentrate as he has no railroads and I will be able to push back Commodore on the naval front before that happens. In the longer term, I should be able to secure Vijayanagara's first ring culturally, it will happen in 10-15 turns by my estimate.

[Gavagai]

Almost forgot. Commodore added power since the last turn but I added more.

[Gavagai]

In other news, Pindicator got himself a merchant, he now only needs tech to get Sushi. He also chose Biology over Industrialism beeline and is running Representation - Free Speech - Caste - Free Market - Org Religion as civics. So, no way to get the second promotion and no way for emergency unit production. He even got Rifling only after Biology. A perfect late-game Farmer's Gambit.
You know, one not implausible scenario along which this game might develop is that I'll win my war, at great cost, but in the meantime, Pindicator launches the spaceship. Do you think Mig and Commodore, who can stuff him out in the moment's notice, will do anything to stop him? I bet you they won't! Because "that would be kingmaking" (technically correct but there is a nuance). If this would be our actual world, I would probably just quit multiplayer civ forever.

[Gavagai]

That was a good turn for the Coalition of Evil and a bad turn for me.

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Western front. I am gathering my doomstack in/near Mirror World. Next turn the empty transport there will receive cargo and we will move out.

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The point of concern here is that I lost track of Mig's stack. Pindicator's units are in its place now. This is especially worrying because of this:

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I had a city here. It was far off to the south-west of my continent. I could not effectively defend it, so it was left to fend for itself with a pre-war garrison of two Infantry and one Redcoat. Mig burned it. The garrison did well, killing the first three Infantry but the next three finished the defenders off. So, at minimum, there were two transports attacking, likely with full cargo of Infantry units.
I more or less expected to lose the city at some point but losing it right now was a surprise. I had two Airships there, on the previous turn I used one to scout north and another one to scout south-east. Apparently, they sneaked up on me from the west. Without these two Airships, I was left with a gaping hole in my vision in this area. I do not know whether it was a raid or a vanguard of a larger offensive but if it is the latter, then I should be really worried about this area:

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These cities are poorly defended and moving defenders here is tricky because the geographical center of my civilization is too far away and my units cannot regroup here (and out of here) in a single turn even with railroads.
There is, however, a deeper problem because this attack means I misjudged the whole situation with Mig. After I took Mirror World I expected him to focus on defending his core areas and trying to take the city back. Now you might say what he is doing is for me: the units he committed to this front will not be available for him when I invade. Sure, but successfully invading is not my goal, my goal is to knock him out of the war. The fact that he is willing to risk his core cities in order to burn my fishing villages suggests a much higher tolerance for pain than I projected. It means, in turn, that the central assumption of my overall strategy - that I can knock Mig out of the war by threatening to burn his core cities - might be false. Also, it means that I should be much more worried about my poorly defended fringes than I assumed. For example, I would not put making another run at Greenland past him (I evacuated most of the defenders out of it).

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Southern front. Commodore is being annoying with Bandit 3, forking Ficdep and Sleepytime. I am almost sure he has nothing or almost nothing inside but still need to respect this threat. For now, I patiently wait for the moment when I can spare some ships to deal with this nuisance.

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Eastern front. Bangalore has finally fallen. To my surprise Commodore kept, it would be not easy to hold. Inflicted less attrition then I hoped, I just killed a few Cavs.

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And this is where Bandit 1 went, apparently having learnt nothing from the fate of Bandit 2. I killed off three Destroyers with Battleships but if he'll stay here for one more turn, I should be able to sink like two-thirds of it, maybe more. I don't hold my hopes particularly high though.

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North-eastern front. I put a plug on Piccadilly's culture bomb, for now all quiet. Also, Madras reclaimed its first ring, so that's a relief.

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As this is one of the rare turns when I have Pindicator's graphs, I decided to show them to you. This is power. Commodore and Mig are now so close that I am not sure anymore which of them I am tracking when I look at second best power.

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Food. The main takeaway here is that Mig is investing in this war way more than his allies.

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Production. Once again, its very visible here how Commodore and Mig lose ground to Pindicator as a result of this war.

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GNP. How the hell Commodore is below Mig?

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Demos. My power decreased somewhat while there is a very small increase in rival best power. As I said, it was a bad turn for me.
As my visibility got messed up this turn, a number of my cities might be vulnerable for attack. If don't lose anything, it will be a relief.

[DaveV]

I read an article recently about Novak Djokovic, the tennis player. He is almost certainly the best tennis player ever, but people tend to root for his opponents. The author of the article wasn't sure why: favoring the underdog? Because he's seen as somewhat prickly and unapproachable? Because he's from a relatively small country, and people would rather root for their compatriots?

I thought of that article when reading this thread. You've played an excellent game, reported consistently and thoroughly (although, like Q, I can't see your pictures). It's draining to play in a game where you're contending with an alliance of players against you, and you've kept a remarkably even temper in that situation as it's gone on for a long time. Even though you aren't getting a lot of love in your thread and the lurker thread is relatively quiet, I hope it helps to know that there are people out there who are reading and appreciate your effort.