T245 Part One - Amicalola Gets One More Sad Post Out Before Things Get Exciting Again
So you know how I've mentioned being overwhelmed by the sheer size/length of the turns? I spread Cereal Mills to one of Lazteuq's islands (the best one), and I was going to whip an airport there to allow for unlimited airlifts right on the border. It's really important, because the other cities sucked and more importantly I had no backup. I had no garrison, because I'm stupid "I'll see any attacks, right?"
So last turn, I noticed a little stack of Lazteuq ships during my initial overview of what has happened. "I'll get those with my destroyers later," says I.
Yeah, apparently at some point I just completely forgot about them. Opening this turn was a real "oh fuck" moment. Look at those lazy destroyers sitting right nearby, too.
I guess it's kind of representative of the real world. Bigger Empires do tend to be less efficient. But still, grumble grumble grumble grumble grumble.
T246 Part One - Admin
Miguelito demands everything we have for uranium. Subtle.
The offer before this took all our stored gold too. But note that Miguelito is researching Military Science Commando Tech - he might have a plan to stop Piccadilly! Yes Mig, take everything I have, pretty please with a cherry on top.
This offer was a bit more perplexing:
I'm not sure what it means. Maybe just grumpy diplo spam - fair enough. The crazy thing is that I was quite close to accepting this, even though it would completely cripple my empire. Hopefully Mig doesn't take offence at my refusal.
Advanced Flight is in, and so are the first Jet Fighters. I'll start whipping Gunships soon too, but not actually that many - they'll mostly be for fighting Mig, rather than the Cairo war I've been vaguely mentioning in the background. Speaking of which, that's finally happening this turn. It's time! So now that admin is over...
Here is the before picture. You can tell how frantically I've been whipping by how many empty build queues there are.
T246 Part 1.5 - Unfortunate Disclaimer
Maybe this is stupid to worry about, but before I write/post the rest of this, it occurred to me that this is all a bit eerie and topical with the current events in Europe. Yikes. I've been almost daydreaming the fun ways to describe this Cairo war for a week or so, but now it all feels a little... distasteful. So I want to be clear, while I have been humorizing/enjoying my (fictional) wars and dictatorship in this game, I am strongly against Putin and Russia's actions in recent years, and especially today. I'm not sure how much fun I can really make a report about full-scale nuclear invasion in the current climate. I do hope the reports are inoffensive to anyone reading, and enjoyable regardless.
T246 Part Two - War!
Last turn I stashed the whipped nukes from Tarkeel's core and the Astro Island onto 6 different submarines, 2 nukes per sub. By contrast, the biggest issue for this turn is the lack of bombers, which have not been moved over yet. I didn't move them ahead of time because I didn't want to spook Cairo and have him split his big stacks up, which would have been a total Game Over Disaster moment. Anyway, bomber fire had to be very carefully rationed this turn, and we took a lot of casualties that maybe would have been saved. I think it was probably worth it though - here are the noteworthy stacks:
In general, the turn was a success. Our fighters and new jet fighters took out Cairo's own fighters, which allowed our (scarce) bombers to at least do some damage before we sent in troops. 10 of the 12 nukes were launched, destroying medium-large navies and armies. We captured 10 cities, and are threatening a lot more next turn (I expect to capture some, but not all, depending on what Cairo does). I advanced with two stacks of absolute crap on the two land fronts, to try and bait out his remaining infantry to be killed by tanks. We are spread a bit thin, but I am hoping that the nuclear strike will be devastating enough to carry us through the war. Specifics in spoilers below:
Inner Sea
The first order of business is to capture that darned central island. Marsin has been making me grumpy for more than half the game! We send in a couple of fighters to take out Cairo's (thanks RefSteel again for the air combat tips!), bomb the infantry a couple of times, and then send in the tanks.
With that done, I undergo the strangest part of the invasion. Cairo's largest navy, by far, is docked by Marsin, as seen above. But this was the navy I could most easily pretend not to be targeting in the turns before the war. So a large stack of battleships has been fortifying with the transports here, and crucially has promoted while Cairo's stack hasn't. Time to do this the old-fashioned way...
I promoted the first ship to Barrage2 for the collateral, but the odds were 30% vs. 66% for Combat2 Battleships, so I only made that mistake once. We don't sink the fleet entirely with the battleships, and get somewhat unlucky combat results preventing transports from being able to finish the job easily.
So we improvise with what we have left. Half-empty transports unload their cargo into Marsin before taking 65% battles against the 15.3 health destroyers. Fighters stationed on carriers harass the enemy fighters (air combat against humans is actually pretty fun, by the way) before their ships do the same. With only the loss of one carrier, we're able to destroy most of the rest, leaving just three galleons.
Along the way, we also bomb and capture nearby coastal cities of Gabby and Xogicur.
North
But I suppose the big event is the nukes, this turn. First up, the northern stacks by Steven, as well as the city's garrison, get obliterated.
Workers railroad up towards the city, and a random tank nabs it.
The northern navy gets wiped next, and we take Mai and Olivia.
Also in the north, a separate group of transports promote to Navigation2 and assault Fausto.
South/East
In the East, Cairo's HUGE stack and his eastern navy are also nuked to the ground.
Capturing Vijayanagara unwittingly gives us the culture to attack Oh My Darling as well. Erm, all a part of my master plan?
In the south, Longholes falls, but the rest of Cairo's northern coast survives for now.
I can only whip so many transports and tanks! The area is threatened next turn, but I doubt I will be able to take everywhere that I am currently threatening once Cairo digs in his troops.
Advancing With Crap
On both fronts, I advance and garrison front cities with a bunch of crappy units, particularly obsolete artillery (catapults, cannons). My thinking is that these units basically don't matter, and if Cairo wants to kill one his 1-mover that does the job won't be able to move anymore, and will thus be an easy target. I'm kicking myself for not taking a 'before' picture of the military advisor, but I killed nearly 60 tanks with the nukes and I can only see one more (very injured), so we should be dealing with mostly infantry, at least for the next turn. I want to bomb out all of Cairo's oil in a couple of turns, but we can't do that yet.
The only stack I can see worth worrying about is here:
But I'm sure that Cairo will combine his remaining city garrisons somewhere, and of course start whipping and drafting everywhere, so this could still get very dicey. There is also the fact that I am relying on city vision, rather than air-scouting, because bombers were so few this turn. Next turn I can swap to better scouting again, in case there is a hidden stack somewhere.
Far East
I nuked Cairo's Astro Island fleet as the final target, so hopefully we can take that within the next few turns. Meanwhile, I have been keeping the big Piccadilly fleet in Kano, because I didn't want to make Cairo suspicious.
It meant they couldn't hit anything this turn, but as with the bombers I think the surprise was worth it. Some went north where they will target the Astro island, and the rest went south where they will try to link up with the forces in Naufragar's land. We have to be pretty careful of Cairo's remaining navy stack with the latter group, especially.
The After shot:
Here's hoping Miguelito stops Piccadilly, or I just spent an awful lot of time on a very irrelevant turn.
Holy shit Miguelito actually did it! My peace might have been a jerk move, but it was absolutely the right call - instead of Mig winning in a cakewalk, I might be able to actually compete now. I seriously can't believe this is actually going to come down to Mig and I as the final competitors. I even more can't believe that I'm in the final two for contention for a big pitboss game!
Piccadilly, if you have any thoughts on my game (or the game in general), I'd love to hear them! Especially on the most recent turns, like my war and the peace treaty. Were you expecting me to offer peace when I did?
"Superdeath seems to have acquired a rep for aggression somehow. In this game that's going to help us because he's going to go to the negotiating table with twitchy eyes and slightly too wide a grin and terrify the neighbors into favorable border agreements, one-sided tech deals and staggered NAPs."
-Old Harry. PB48.
I guess it's much easier NOW. Devastation and Domination! :D
Gratz on your tactics, although I agree that it was kind of a jerk move But hey, you have to piss off some people if you want to win a big game. (or you have to be much better on micro and makro than everybody else)
We send in a couple of fighters to take out Cairo's (thanks RefSteel again for the air combat tips!), bomb the infantry a couple of times, and then send in the tanks.
![[Image: noidea.gif]](https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/images/smilies/noidea.gif)
In this game that's going to help us because he's going to go to the negotiating table with twitchy eyes and slightly too wide a grin and terrify the neighbors into favorable border agreements, one-sided tech deals and staggered NAPs."