Lurking the Seven Seas

[Sullla]

We've been pretty critical of suboptimal in this thread so let's give him some due credit for capturing Australia's capital:




Yes, the Jong attack should have had more units. Yes, with better planning (and actual contribution from China!) this could have wiped another team off the map completely. But suboptimal still pulled off a strategic success and looks to be inflicting long term damage on Australia. I still don't think suboptimal and roland have any realistic chance to win since they have such poor shipbuilding capacity but I did want to give a tip of the hat to suboptimal for recognizing the danger posed by Russia/Australia and moving to respond. Imagine how bleak the situation would be if Indonesia had chased after Norway instead while leaving the southern pair completely untouched.

Other thoughts:

* It's shocking how many players are willing to sign 30 turn Declaration of Friendships without even discussing the deal with their teammate. Wouldn't it be worth holding the save for a few hours before closing off all options on who the team can attack for the next month? Seems crazy to me.

* I don't understand why Phoenicia/Norway offered a city without an attached Declaration of Friendship deal. Yes, it was kind of scummy for TheArchduke to take the city and then not sign a corresponding Declaration of Friendship - but why even raise the possibility of letting that happen? Just offer them both together at the same time! If the deal gets rejected then you have your answer about what's going to happen. Am I missing something here in the Civ6 mechanics (?)







* Russia's production with all those Work Ethic Lavras is absurd. I wish that Civ6 had a proper Demographics screen so that this could be measured better. Chevalier's iceball tundra cities are all outputting as much or more production than the capitals of the other players. He can probably win the game at this point even with Australia contributing almost nothing. This is still Russia's game to lose because they are the one civ that can crank out ships nonstop once the initial wave of upgraded galleys/quadriremes runs out. (Not to mention 200 faith/turn and the Grandmaster's Chapel, sheesh!)

[williams482]

The one criticism I have for Chev is his war plan on Indonesia but I can say that as a whole - almost no one's war plans in this game make any sense to me.

I'm curious, what would you do?

[Sullla]

The Indonesian fleet did a lot of damage but finally was sunk by Chevalier's frigates. I think that it's telling that suboptimal never attempted to fight back against the Russian ships to inflict at least some casualties before being destroyed. He just kept trying to run away until all his ships were dead. For that matter, suboptimal rarely shows what he's building in his cities so this was a rare moment to get a glimpse of what's going on. Here's the center island:




None of these cities are on the water (except the island spot captured from Chevalier), none of them are building Harbor districts, none of them are building ships. Seriously, what the heck is this?! Well how about the cities on the home island?




The capital is still the only city that can build ships and it's working on... a trebuchet? What?! How about China then?







Roland has three cities building ships, a galley and two quadriremes. This team's gameplay has been utterly baffling to me from start to finish. They just... don't build ships! At all! On an archipelago map, in the middle of a hot war, with Russia having just sunk the whole Indonesian navy and sitting there with 1300 military rating. Russia needs about 10 turns to move ships up here and then this team is going to get annihilated. How can they be this oblivious to what's happening on the rest of the map???

[civac2]

Can CMF take these cities if they are not on the coast?

[civac2]

I was wondering how that plays out if the defenders have ranged units (crossbows?) standing off the coast. I suppose you can still shoot the cities if they are only one tile off the coast.

[Sullla]

This feels like a serious tactical error from TheArchduke:




He divided his fleet in half directly in the face of the enemy! Half of the English fleet is off to the north and the rest is sitting in the south, too far away to join the fight immediately. I have no idea why TheArchduke has chosen this strategy, it certainly seems like ljubljana should collapse on one of these sides and use his temporary advantage in numbers. However, ljubljana also seems to be terrified of the single ironclad fleet which makes no sense to me either. Sure, it's something like an 80 strength melee unit when all the other ships are roughly 50-55 strength. But so what? It's one ship. Just ignore it and focus on killing everything else because one mostly-invincible ship doesn't matter very much. As a melee unit, the ironclad will lose HP every time that it attacks so it will literally kill itself eventually. It can only make one (melee) attack per turn and ultimately that's not *THAT* dangerous. Quite a contrast from when Indonesia was sailing around with half a dozen invincible jongs (with ranged attacks, not melee ones) and Chevalier was able to come up with a solid defense.

[williams482]

This is pretty wild to follow as an omnipotent lurker.

As you say, TAD made what looks to be a pretty substantial error in dividing his fleet, but ljubljana is extremely hesitant to capitalize because they don't believe TAD would make such a major error, and the in-game intel they have is uncertain enough that this prior hasn't been overcome.

Ljubljana's fears about the ironclad also stem from them coming up with a clever way to use that ship, and assuming TAD will come up with the same idea and execute on it (which he hasn't). And Ljubljana's idea for how to use the invincible ironclad is a good one: TAD could have sailed it into the three tile choke between WotW and Linear B, pushed the rest of his northern fleet behind it but just out of range of any encircling frigates, used ZoC to prevent any Phoenician ships from slipping past, pushed the southern fleet into a striking position where they can hit any ships coming around south of WotW next turn, absorbed Ljubljana's first strike against the ironclad, and then brought the hammer down from two directions against a fleet trapped in the bay. Knowing everything we lurkers know, I'm pretty confident that would have resulted in the destruction of the Phoenician fleet in relatively short order, then TAD can do pretty much whatever he likes from there.

Now, obviously TAD isn't doing that. TAD doesn't know exactly where all of Ljubljana's ships are, and how favorable that position is to the ironclad choke tactic. He doesn't even know there is a bay behind WotW, although the bits of land he can see to the southeast are suggestive. And what he's actually doing isn't all that far off, in one sense, because he's set up a situation where Ljubljana is forced to send his navy through a somewhat narrow straight and surrender the first strike. It's worse than the ironclad plan because involving the southern fleet will take longer and give Woden's ships time to get relevant, but TAD doesn't know what the timeline for that is.

It looks like Chevalier is (somehow) correct about what Ljubljana's play should have been. Mass the fleet in the north of England, ignore the bloody ironclad, and kill everything you can on the first turn of the war. TAD can then throw the southern fleet at whatever, but you don't actually have all that many vulnerable cities southeast of WotW (just the new, stagnant Nsibidi and Woden's' much more fortified cities further south) so TAD can't actually hurt you all that much on that front. If TAD anticipates the strike to the north, he has a choice between just kinda taking the hit and getting his northern fleet wrecked, or trying to pull his un-upgraded ships back along the coastline and leaving you to take out his capital for probably 3-5 turns.

Easy for me to say though, I know more than either player does individually and have nothing riding on my suggestions.

[civac2]

You do know that bonus only applies to religious combat and maybe warrior monks, right? :P 99% on this.

[SadGit]

Im more concerned about how salty CMF will be once he realises that they sniped the Glight and are joining their fleets. And once again how salty he will be after the game when he sees its due to the sub and not the team he was fighting when Australia burned.

[Krill]

Got a Month to find a sub for CMF? Good luck with that one.