[SPOILERS] A new Thread [SPOILERS]

[spacetyrantxenu]

I agree, fun over everything else. Go out a winner, kill Furungy for his treachery revenge seeking!

[flugauto]

Maybe we should build something useful..., like a GLH...???

[spacetyrantxenu]

That would be hilarious but I may have promised to modkill the next player who did it.

[Mardoc]

As tempting as that is...we've researched Corporation now and obsoleted the sucker.

So, damage. Furungy got four of our southern island cities, one minor mainland city, and our Heroic Epic . Aside from the HE, that's all fairly replaceable, once we regain control of the area. He pretty much only did grenadiers from galleons, no main stack to be hit by cannon.

I think I might just assemble a stack of 30 cannon/30 Infantry and press straight for his capital, while building some frigate/airship pairs to clear him out of the seas. Or else clear him from the seas, then stack a bunch of infantry on galleons in Rome's bay, to fork four cities.

For the time being I stuck with 100% cash and all upgrades. Maybe four more turns to upgrade all the obsolete stuff in the empire, after which I think we probably should go for Combustion. Airships might give us sea control...but destroyers certainly will.

It's really quite amazing how much we still have, though. Six cities does not feel crippling. Especially when most of them were fairly minor cities. Push up to Rome, and we'll have made up for it

Also pulled most of the units from the Gawdzak and Zanth borders. Need to hit Furungy with overwhelming numbers while the two of them are busy elsewhere - and besides, the game is likely lost anyway.

This turn, the only fighting was cleaning up the landed Grens and losing a Galleon in an 80% odds attempt to clear one of his galleons (post airstrike). But we dumped 1300 gold and a bunch of population into more military, and started to redeploy, so things should look bloodier soon.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Bloody moon rising!

[flugauto]

Furungy has the best land in the game, ergo Roma aybabtu est.

[Mardoc]

Furungy has the best land in the game, ergo Roma aybabtu est.

If we can make it work, I might even withdraw my concession .

But...probably not. No matter how well we do, I expect Zanth can do better. He can probably double his land again just by taking out 2metra. We're well into the part of the game where land pays back pretty fast. And we're not that far from space, either.

For a what-if, I have to wonder what if I pushed earlier to invade Rome instead of trying to out tech Zanth. Maybe something could have been successful.

[flugauto]

For a while, imagine there is no Zanth and do the best about Furungy. And hope 2M imagines there is only Zanth.

[Mardoc]

For a while, imagine there is no Zanth and do the best about Furungy.

Well, mostly yep. Leaving a few Infantry and Machine Guns on his border to prevent any minor opportunism.

And hope 2M imagines there is only Zanth.

He whipped something like 20 times last turn.

Anyway, I did play the next turn this morning. More infantry building and upgrading and moving the army toward Furungy. Killed 1 caravel and three workers (had a chariot in 2metra-land, that was able to snipe the workers with airship spotting). Still not much action, at least on my end, but we'll be ready shortly.

He's researching Scientific Method - my guess is he wants airships of his own. But ideally by the time he gets there, he'll have bigger problems to worry about.

For example, I noticed that although he has cannons...I only see 12 of them on the front line. Consider this scenario: 5 MGs/30 Inf/30 cannon. A dozen cannons suicide into that, wounding 12 covering units pretty well and putting one hit of collateral onto each remaining unit. Are we actually vulnerable to grenadiers, rifles, and cavalry at that point? I don't really think so. Our units will have even odds or better. Add one more detail: we can be on a hill when this happens - there's a nice chain of them running from our borders to one of his nice border cities; size 15 or 18 or something like that; he'll probably want to defend it. I'm not particularly afraid of cavalry hitting infantry with one wound, on a hill - I bet they still get 20% odds or lower.

Now...that army can be ready in 2-3 turns . We've got 40 cannon already in theater, and 15 Inf/more than 15 upgradable units. Plus another dozen units complete at end of turn. Just need a couple thousand more gold to dump into upgrades and we can be ready, and we're getting ~1300 gpt. And if I can bring along more bodies and more machine guns, it gets even better; spread the collateral out more, include more units with immunity, and his cannon have less effect. Also, collect airships and keep his units wounded; that'll help too. Most of his ships have been wounded down to 80% now, so the airships will need new targets anyway.

It's not a very elegant solution. One tile at a time will take a long while to kill Rome. Taking back the seas, then forking cities from galleons would be a lot more elegant. But, well, taking back the seas is going to require some time; my navy was mostly galleons and mostly over by BaII; we need to build some frigates and manuver and probably research Combustion and build Destroyers, too. I think a marching army ought to be able to take at least the near cities from Furungy in that time. Bring workers behind, and connect them to our rails, and we can hold them, too.

In the longer run, we're still going to put effort into seapower. We can progress a lot faster with galleons/transports than we can with a marching army. And we can't afford to stay spread out guarding the ports the way we are now, either - let alone the way we'd have to be if he threatened our backlines. Plus, I'd like to resettle the cities he razed. So Combustion will be a vital tool here.

But we have enough of an advantage due to our tech lead and our cannon stack that we can start hurting Furungy now. Therefore, we should do it. Take the initiative back, start killing his units and taking his cities.

[flugauto]

Are we N1 power yet?