Gavagai climbs the chaos ladder

[DaveV]

It might be my browser - I see them if I open your thread in incognito mode but not otherwise.

Same for me (Chrome browser). I never would have thought to try that.

[Gavagai]

This turn we have a mix of good and bad news.

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Let's start with the bad. Western front. I underestimated my opposition. Pindicator and Mig combined their naval stacks and well, taken together they have a bigger stick than I do. There are north of fifty Destroyers visible while I have 38 Destroyers and a Battleship. Before my plan was to move my fleet to the straight between the two islands 1E from their stack and fork six cities from there but now I fear I can just lose the majority of my fleet if I do that (I assume more Destroyers can attack from the fog).
Another problem here is this:

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Three transports in this city and there are more on the way. The way naval warfare works is that if you have a doomstack that your opponent is afraid to attack, you get to move inside his territorial waters and fork a shitton of cities with your transports. As I just said, I fear losing a defensive battle against them, so it goes without saying I would fear losing an offensive battle even more. Now, the tile 1SE from Chatgpt has a pre-built fort, I know it for sure because I spotted his workers earlier, so his transports are coming at me fast and hard.

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After consideration, I ended up doing this. The big offensive I planned is not going to happen, now I need to buy time. By my estimate, I will need five more turns to concentrate a critical mass of Battleships on this front and this is just a couple of tempi too slow to stop the incoming attack. So I decided to give Mig something else to do. My expeditionary force landed on the very tile where the fort was pre-built, so this is one tempo won right there. He can unload whatever he has in his transports and attack but let me put it this way: if he has enough to seriously hurt this force, then I would prefer him to spend these resources here than on attacking my islands. Mig can also try to attack my fleet but the island shields me from whatever he has in the fog and not all his ships can reach this tile. Vodka predicts that if it is just Mig attacking I'll crush him but with the follow-up from Pindicator that will be a bloody draw. I can live with that.
Offered Mig white peace just in case he is not eager to roll the dice on the battles here. But I think the strategy of quickly knocking him out of the war has pretty much failed. I just was not able to hit sufficiently hard.

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Southern front. Bandit 3 finally made its move. The attacking force looks way weaker than my garrison but there is a chance the city will fall. Commodore can hit it with eight Airships and there is space for more units in his Galleons.

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Commodore is invading another island of mine - well, sort of invading. There is actually a somewhat clever idea here. The mini-stack occupies the only road between the two cities and Sentosa is almost undefended. To secure it I would need to attack out of Pulau Ubin and I have only few Infantry there, mostly city-garrison promoted. This is all mute because I could reinforce Sentosa from the sea but Commodore could not know this.
It could have been a worthwhile idea if he invested just one transport into it, the problem is, he brought almost all of Bandit 1. See two transports 1 NW from his stack? There have been more than 20 Destroyers there, all gone. Transports I also killed after taking this picture, they defended last, so I assume they had cargo. I only lost two or three ships - that's what mass Battleships do in naval battles.
Don't know what Commodore has been thinking here. I mean he knew that something killed Bandit 2 around this area just a couple of turns ago, right?

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Eastern front - all quiet. Commodore is chilling in Bangalore.
No changes with Piccadilly, so no picture. He did not do the culture bombing Agra trick. Could be because he knows this mechanics better than I do: I read up on culture bombs, they add only 18 plot culture to the fourth ring. So it would be useless for him.

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After the demise of Bandit 1 rival best power is Mig. I tested it by killing his sentry frigate.

[xist10]

I can see the pictures with firefox.

[klops]

the battleship-reinforcement for Mig, you were talking about, is that newly built or those who just killed parts of commodores fleet (and probably need to heal)?
difficult to manage superior forces on opposites sides of a continent...

[Gavagai]

the battleship-reinforcement for Mig, you were talking about, is that newly built or those who just killed parts of commodores fleet (and probably need to heal)?
difficult to manage superior forces on opposites sides of a continent...

Newly built. Battleships are too slow to move them around too much.

[Gavagai]

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Western front. Mig attacked me both on land and at sea.
On land, he killed four tanks and three infantry at the cost of three cannons and eight infantry. I pulled the remainder of my stack back on transports. ChatGPT has a massive garrison and so does Second Coming (the southern city). At sea, the battle went more or less like vodka predicted. Mig got demolished when he tried to attack but then Pindicator saved the day and evened the score somewhat. Overall I lost 21 Destroyers and killed something around 30.

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Retreated back to Mirror World. Mig's fleet is parked in Gao which is very poorly defended. I can hit it with 12 units next turn, but I am pretty sure he will regroup.
On the operational level, this battle was a defeat. My offensive failed, and my units were forced to retreat.
Strategically it was a victory. My goal was to buy time and in that, I succeeded. Moreover, I was able to reduce the number of opposing Destroyers which, in turn, reduced the number of Battleships needed to handle them and I defused his amphibious strike force. It is not just that I killed half of it - the remainder was forced to take stupid promotions, like ambush, instead of the dreaded amphibious.
On the grand strategy level, the whole affair was a fiasco. My basic strategic idea to quickly knock Mig out of the war is no longer viable and I need to brace myself for a long war of attrition.

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Southern front. Still this nonsense. Might be able to send a relief force next turn depending on how Commodore positions his blockading units.

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North-Eastern front. Saved for the last, the big news of this turn. INCOMING. Piccadilly's stack ventured south of Ahmedabad and now directly threatens Vijayanagara. It is not that big of a problem right now - I can defend one city comfortably (the garrison of Vija is on screen). But next turn, he can fork Vija and Thoughtpolice and I cannot say I have one more stack of this size just lying around.
It can get worse long term. Check out the bigger picture:

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If Commodore puts transports in Bangalore, he can fork three of my coastal cities (four if seven-movers), including Thoughpolice. That was why I wanted to raze Bombay and settle a better border city so desperately. I don't think it will actually overwhelm me but I will be unable to conduct any major offensive operations for a while as all my reserves would be tied up just on holding this whole situation from collapsing. Retaking Bangalore has become a priority now but it will not be easy as it has a massive garrison (on screen) and I don't have that many spare units.
Meanwhile, amidst all this...

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Feast in time of plague, yep. I have my reasons, however.

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These are my cities sorted by happiness. After massive battles of the previous turn war weariness started to be noticeable and it will get only worse. My idea is to go Radio after FLight and build the Eiffel Tower and Rock'n Roll. Broadcast towers give +1 happiness from hit singles and musicals, so it will yield me +4 happiness in all cities overall. And then I can go Fascism after nukes.
By the way, Commodore went Democracy after Industrialism and I don't like this decision for him, as I disliked almost all his strategic choices in this game. I assume he wants Universal Suffrage but it means abandoning an easy way to control happiness and I don't think in his situation it is a worthwhile trade. I know about Ball Courts but the way he throws away units he would need all the happiness he can get. He could have built Broadway if he wanted, by the way, I could not spare hammers before and he had Electricity for a while, so I assume he does not want it as it did not get built (well, fingers crossed). It would be a big mistake on his part to concede this wonder to me.

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Demos. Big drops for both me and best rival power which is again Commodore.

[Mjmd]

Thanks again for doing these big detailed updates.

[Dreylin]

Thanks again for doing these big detailed updates.

Agreed, I'm reading with interest. (and cheering from the sidelines!)

[Gavagai]

Western front. Mig's forces is mostly concentrated in Gao (on screen) while mine are in Mirror World. Pindi parked his fleet in ChatGPT.

Second Coming is seven tiles from Mirror World and defended by a weak garrison. One of my transports have an unspent promotion which could be Nav2 so this turn I had an option to raze it. After consideration, I decided that this city and its contents does not worth sacrificing an elite transport with good units, in future I might have better opportunities to use this trick. Was a close call, however. I might reconsider this decision next turn if the opportunity is still there.

Southern front. Commodore suicided his land stack against Ficded and grouped Bandit 3 back in one stack. I killed all metal units in Bandit 3 but he can replace them:

I also have reinforcements coming in though, the battle for the Southern Sea has begun for real. I expect Southern front to see the most action in upcoming terms, unless Mig decides to push out.

South-Eastern Front. Commodore is gathering a new fleet near Bowl Bound. I am baiting him with a workboat, at this point I would not be even surprised if Commodore takes the bait.

North-Eastern front. I am testing the waters near Bangalore. I killed a Galleon there and put a Battleship and a Destroyer near the city. The manner of Commodore's reaction might tell me something about how much value he assigns to this area.

Piccadilly's stack remained in place, keeping Thoughtpolice free from threats. This is not the first time Piccadilly passes up forking opportunities, it is possible he is blind to this particular tactical tool.

Demos. I fully replenished my losses from the Battle of Chatgpt. Rival best power (still Commodore) keeps going down. This turn it is below four million, the lowest it has been since the start of the war.

The Battle of Chatgpt and the destruction of Bandit 1 is now visible on the power graphs.

[Gavagai]

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Western front. Mig and me parked our respective stacks in Gao and Mirror World.

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Southern front. Commodore used his wooden ships to block the shortest path to Air Barron (don't mix it up with Air Baron) and prevented me from sniping it this turn. One of the few things I admire about how Commodore conducted this war is how he is milking value from his obsolete wooden navy.

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South-Eastern front. Our navies starring each other down. Commodore starts to deploy Battleships.

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North-Eastern front. Me and Commodore are fighting a running naval battle near Bangalore, so far he come off ahead in exchanges. Piccadilly did decide to fork Vija and Thoughtpolice. The garrison of Thoughtpolice is on screen, this is what I have in Vija:

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Vodka says he has zero chance of breaking any of those.

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Demos. Rival best power is now Mig.

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Putting it here to track Mig's gold reserves.
Frontlines have now stabilized, except for the Southern one. From now on I will only report if something changes.