[SPOILERS] Chevalier Mal Fet and Marcopolothefraud lead a Soviet Down Under

[williams482]

Turn 149:

Our courser at Glen Kamara took a combined 76 damage from (presumably) the crossbow, treb, and Man at Arms. That's about what I expected and would have allowed us to pillage-heal and shift south to hit the city next turn... except that bloody dust storm swept through here and pillaged the farm for us!



I suppose I should probably be thankful it didn't just kill our unit outright, but come on. How dare this game dispense random punishment for my objectively bad decisions. I pull the injured courser back into the water, and bring up last turn's purchase to where it should be able to attack the city from the south the way I clearly should have tried last turn. Roland can kill the injured courser with his crossbow, but if he does he'll leave it in range to be eviscerated by our frigates.



Over at Fil Helander, Roland has managed to mass fire and kill one of our frigates. I think he's got a double-city-strike-promoted Victor in there, which combined with the garrisoned treb is enough to kill a frigate every turn. We have five frigates in-theater now, and need to eliminate those walls as fast as possible to limit our losses. We blast annother 48 HP off the walls with four frigate strikes, but unfortunately caravels aren't much help in reducing them further:



I opt to attack anyway, with the two caravels knocking off 2 and 3 HP off the walls while taking 44 and 46 damage themselves. Both will probably die if Roland is inclined to make that happen next turn, but these units are easier to replace than the Niter-using frigates and I have a whole lot more of them in-theater. Plus, if Roland pulls that caravel out of the city that's a big win for us.

Conquest of 50 Ways and Graceland is going to be a tricky bit of business. 50 Ways is the Indonesian capital, and the only way I can think of for Graceland to be at 74 (!!!) defensive strength is if they've got a well promoted Victor in there. With only one tile each for frigates to strike from, we probably need cossacks and line infantry to break through. Military Science should definitely be our next tech target once Industrialization is done.



Our courser in mainland Indochina reveals the city of Diamonds (complete with a garrisoned slinger!) and moves to a truffles camp to pillage next turn. 



Hermanos faith purchases a knight. Borodino finished it's shipyard and starts a 3t frigate. Fiji finished a trader, which I send to Flower Boy for 12g plus 2f/2h for each city, and starts a 7t Caravel. Hermanos starts to repair it's shrine, due in 2 turns.

The barbs were so kind as to attack at Nikolai last turn, and hopefully will continue to do so. If they stick with that plan we are in no danger whatsoever.

Fort Miln has been bombed down to nothing, and the Raiders will be able to waltz in at their leisure next turn. Archduke's capital of Open Government has just 63 HP left and seems similarly doomed.

Marco, what is your research plan right now? Are you able to help with Economics, Sanitation, and/or Gunpowder, or should I be planning to push through those myself and pass the boosts to you?

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I'm not sure I agree with using the caravels, even if they draw fire away from the frigates - the main thing now is to minimize losses with an eye towards the naval confrontation in ~18 turns. Obviously we need to get those walls down as quickly as possible so we stop bleeding frigates, but caravels are valuable for naval supremacy. He's got a frigate behind the city, too, so we're looking at 3x frigate strikes, the treb, and the caravel next turn - it'd be ideal to keep the ship health high to weather those and rotate in fresh caravels. But, if it knocks the city out next turn or the turn after, it should be fine.

Also worth studying their defensive tactics - Victor with high walls and a garrison CAN sting. We can faith purchase trebs/bombards so ignore the inefficiency of building the damn things instead of ships, so POSSIBLY if we expect an attack we can't defend against - Nikolai/east Australia, possibly southern Svalbard - it might a plan worth considering. More ships is almost always a better investment, though.

Sorry about leaving you with a jungle quagmire on the main island. Be sure to focus on force preservation and move your troops up en masse, to minimize damage from city strikes. Remember our lessons from the Canadian invasion of suboptimal in PBEM18!

Pity Diamonds is safe from the sea, it looks like.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

As for Australia, marco, I know you're pressed for time. I imagine Gunpowder would be best for Australia to pursue while we pass along the Industrialization-path eurekas, BUT Australia needs that tech ASAP as well so he can hook up his coal and pool our resources.

Much will depend upon how much coal each side can field - ironclads and BBs are going to be the state-of-the-art and they take coal, as do factories if we go that route.

[williams482]

Turn 150:

Steam Power has been boosted, so we switch research to that tech and will complete it next turn. We only have 12 coal so we won't get any auto-upgrades, and I'll hold off on asking for more from Archduke until we have a way to spend it efficiently via discounted upgrades. Ideally we would figure out how to slip in a batch of quads at the less developed cities while the better sites handle niter auto-upgrades, then slack off building ships for a few turns and do as many upgrades as we can with both discount policies in place? Hmm, that merits some further planning.

At Fil Helander Roland has killed one of the two caravels and a frigate, rendering those two caravel attacks totally pointless.



I bombard the defenses once again for 55 HP off the defenses, leaving them at 50, and withdraw the one injured caravel for two healthy ones. We will lose a frigate next turn, but we should be able to take the city. Unfortunately the frigate and Man at Arms will probably be able to snatch it right back, so we should probably settle for reducing the walls, then plan to take the city proper next turn when we can use our frigates to break up a potential counterattack.

At Glen Kamara, our frigate reduces the city to nothing, and the coursers move in. The healthy one will take the city next turn, the injured one should be able to pillage one of those great walls:



Two dumb things are highlighted in this sequence. First, the Civ VI unit pathing algorithm is totally oblivious to the movement cost of units disembarking. It gave the appearance that this courser would be able to reach Glen Kamara this turn, when moving the unit one tile at a time revealed that this was in fact false. It also wanted to disembark, then re-embark in order to move from it's original position to the frigate's firing position, despite the fact that doing so was totally unnecessary (there was a water path of equal length to reach that tile) and would have prevented my unit from reaching the tile at all by burning too much movement. I didn't actually want to go to that tile and didn't try, so it's irrelevant here, but this bug has been a source of considerable frustration in my singleplayer games where I'm less careful about assuming the game is dumb and out to get me.

Second, that courser on the great wall tile? I'm not allowed to end that unit's turn. For some stupid reason, because it's on a tile that grants automatic fortification, it's impossible to set the unit to "alert" or to skip it's turn. Same stupid problem that our archer in Nikolai had in my first turn here, but this one can't be resolved by moving the unit back and forth, so I have to either fortify it and remember to move it next turn (which I certainly will here, but often forget in singleplayer) or just keep cycling units until the game decides to let me end turn with this one unmoved. Again, dumb.

I'm sure the Firaxis QA team (which apparently really does exist!) is full of perfectly wonderful people, but how does crap like this not get caught?

Speaking of Nikolai, barb MaA #1 has finished suiciding himself, barb MaA #2 is making steady progress towards the same goal. Our unit is in fine shape and there seems to be no danger here.



Knyaz Suvurov can't start a frigate yet for lack of Niter, so starts a quad which will be upgraded in-queue next turn. Sissoi completed it's prebuilt frigate, and dumps whatever overflow may exist into a quad before I resume it's prebuilt caravel next turn. Aleksandr finishes a warrior and starts another, although I am increasingly sceptical of the chances that these units will prove useful for military police with the policy cards available to us, this city has little else of value it can build for us. I do move Liang over here and will likely switch to a 4t builder next turn. Olsyayba and Seniavin start new 5t caravels. Brother starts a 14t library, for lack of clearly better options.

At 50 Ways, our MaA got hit for 55 damage last turn and pulls back. I move mounted units into pillaging positions, and keep everything else back. This city will not fall until we get stronger units in play up here, which isn't going to happen any time soon.



I'm sending a detachment of five caravels to check out the area past Bortus. I know there is a narrow passage there because I'm a spoiled lurker, although I don't remember if it's a passage which can be accessed without risking these units, or if there's anything for them to ambush and/or pillage over there. If there is we'll get it, if there isn't we should be able to withdraw and reposition in plenty of time for the Raider war.



Also of note there, this new batch of tornadoes. They are allegedly moving north-west, so directly into the ocean? Weird.

Hermanos purchases another courser, and the knight moves out to potentially engate Roland's newly upgraded musket. I do something dumb for no good reason and, after pillaging that truffles camp for 134 faith, move my courser into Diamonds' line of fire. I shouldn't be at risk of losing the unit, especially with nearby farms to pillage, but that was still silly. I decide to smack Roland's warrior for 71 (taking 11) while I'm over here.



Our missionary which converted Nikolai puts a charge into Flower Boy. It's not converted yet, but it's close and we have one more charge. We'll see next turn if it's close enough to pick up the religion naturally at a reasonable pace, or if I should spend the missionary's last charge over here. Ideally I could send it over to Sakhalin instead.

With the capture of Fort Miln, the Raiders have passed Team Sandbox for second place in score. Archduke's capital has zero HP remaining, and Woden has a ram + berzerker closing in on Tibbetts Brook (which seems to be building medieval walls).

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Ah, yeah, that was what I was afraid of with the caravels - they're really useless against walls, but do decent work once the walls are down, and are pretty durable provided they're at full health. Oh, well, lesson learned, I forgot not everyone's been obsessing over the finer points of Civ VI Renaissance warfare for three months. No worries! If you can take and hold the city, you can pass the fleet through to take Valetta and possibly 1-2 enemy cities on the coast, which would be worthwhile. 18 turns is plenty of time.

Re: Steam Power, you have forgotten that ironclads aren't a 20-coal cost, like horse/iron/niter units, they're a 1 coal cost, like other oil/aluminum units. So I expect you'll see some upgrades in queue. If you have professional army, an ironclad or two to help crack China's capital is nice. Also note that once you take Fil Helander, you'll have a 3-turn window to hit the capital before Victor can establish and double the wall strength, so be sure to be aggressive.

Otherwise, I would mass your army around the former Proof and push up en masse - two bombards and a frigate squadron SHOULD be able to slug it out with the walls, but men at arms are obviously obsolete given that Musketman...we could really use an inspiration for Gunpowder, but it will have to wait until the more important Coal is researched, muskets aren't make or break but coal is. Still, sufficient grinding should do. I think it might also be worthwhile to take potshots at the walls to keep sub from upgrading them once he hits Siege Tactics.

The army in Indochina I think should mass in the south, around the Petra city - it looks like roland aims to fight for the city and having more coursers/knights in the area would be ideal. Remember, always mass your units as much as possible so they can support each other and get each other out of trouble. Send in multiple units at once to pillage, so he can't mass all his fire at one unit at a time (or if he does, the others get away scot-free).

One last thing - consider getting two builders out before turn 162, and hold them in readiness to plant coal mines as soon as possible after Industrialization is unlocked.

[williams482]

Turn 151:

Steam Power completes:



It is our first Industrial tech, but not The first. I begin research on Sanitation, prioritizing that one in the unlikely event Macro can boost Economics for us in the next 6 turns, but will move to that tech next in our pursuit of Industrialization. With no help from boosts we'll get it in 12 turns. As Chevalier foretold, all our caravel builds were upgraded in queue, and we have Ironclads due in 4, 6, 7, 7, 8, and 8 turns. Sevastopol places it's Canal, due in 14 turns with a little tile micro.

I said 12 turns, but in practice it will be more like 6. We'll be dropping the Galileo bombshell next turn for a cool 1000 beakers, completing Sanitation and overflowing a fair bit into Economics. Why wait? Because we're carrying 134.6 beakers of overflow and that might get eaten if we do it this turn. How do I know I'm carrying overflow? Because at least one modder out there was sharp enough to figure such things are desperately needed:



Thanks to the same mod, I also know I've invested 117.0 / 1,116 beakers into Sanitation. Repeat after me, the unofficial motto of Civilization VI:

"This shouldn't even have to be a mod."

Anyway, on to the war. We lost one frigate outside Fil Helander, which was fully expected, and both of the injured coursers in the Kamara/Diamonds region. That's not exactly what I wanted, and will cost us a 248g great wall pillage, but Roland did expose a crossbow where our ships can kill it and I expect we can replace ground troops more easily than that can:



A nearby unpromoted frigate takes the top off that crossbow and earns a promotion. The two visible frigates combine to kill the crossbow and bring the city to zero defenses, and our courser pillages the wall it's standing on, then waltzes into the city:



unfortunately I'm left with an immediate unsavory decision. That treb+musket combo are slight favorites to take the city back on their turn. This is definitely a situation where the ability to faith purchase walls would be an enormously good deal, but we don't have that power, nor do we have a safe way to retake the city next turn. Worse, our entire hopes of making an actual conquest of Indochina productive in the short to intermediate term relies on Coliseum amenities to prevent these cities from being a net drain on our empire. So what we do with this city has an enormous effect on what we do with this campaign. So let's see how other theaters shake out first.

At Fil Helander, three frigate strikes and two caravel attacks is just barely enough to clear out both the walls and the city defenses:



I actually grossly mismanaged this combat, failing to bring up the Admiral or the additional frigate I had within reach.  That costs us at the very least a chance to take a bite out of that Chinese frigate. Fortunately it doesn't matter all that much, as unlike at Kamara there are no Chinese melee attackers able to take this city next turn, so although it will be blasted to all hell it shouldn't fall, and we should be able to blast the enemy to all hell in return. So this city we can keep without too much worry, and prepare to send a caravel squadron sweeping through the canal as soon as possible. Of course this game is fucking dumb and doesn't let me decide on this city without deciding on the other one first.

The ground based fighting thus far has made one thing plainly evident: we are not going to be able to win the field or capture inland cities in indochina at our current level of technology. We are 1,053 beakers short of being able to introduce cossacks and line infantry to the field, units that will significantly outclass China's muskets and give us enough punch to have a credible shot at cracking the Indonesian cities on Sakhalin. Without that, we cannot hope to make real progress or even get significant pillaging rewards. This has me seriously considering spending Galileo on Banking -> Military Science, then pushing through to industrialization the hard way. If we did that, we'd hit Industrialization on t164, just a few turns before our inevitable war with the Raiders. We'd have cossacks in play on t153, and we would be able to turn that into some territory gains and pillaging rewards in that 15 turn period before the real war erupts, but that also dramatically reduces our chances of hitting battleships (which would be an enormous advantage). How big are those chances to begin with? Refining requires one coal plant to boost. Borodino requires 7 turns to complete a factory, and another 6 to complete the coal plant. If we spend Galileo chasing Industrialization, we get the tech on t157 or t158 (depending on conquests), then complete the builds on t170 at the earliest. The Modern era techs are arranged like so:



With the bottom left ones branching directly off of industrialization, so there is a 2/8 = 25% chance we reveal that Battleships are within reach, two turns after the start of the war. I'm not sure I like that gamble much either.

I'm tempted to hold the turn here, but this game has been slowed enough and we'll have plenty of time to discuss strategy before the next turn rolls around. For now, I'm going to take the wishy-washiest options available to me and keep both cities. Former Kamera is now Armstrong Okoflex, selected because that's a hilarious name, plus the player is apparently not particularly good and I expect to lose this city. Former Fil is now Scott Bain, who appears to be Glasgow's top goalkeeper, and damnit we're keeping this one. I move the knight up adjacent to Okoflex, in hopes of impeding the incoming attack on the city, or at least taking it back (and very plausibly burning it) when it falls. 



Both captured cities plus Hermanos start on walls, although this is mostly a hopeful gesture.

Our Caravels push through the narrow passage south of Bortus and stumble upon a rather formidable defensive setup:



I rather wish the game had sent Suboptimal's capital here, it would have made offering him his capital for the rest of Sakhalin a possibility. suffice it to say we won't be cracking this with a few caravels, nor is there much to pillage without throwing away ships. If Suboptimal lets us kill that Jong we'll happily oblige, but otherwise we keep pushing west or fall back to the east.

At 50 ways, we move up a frigate to take 21 points all the (still medieval) walls, then our knight and courser pillage the plantation and Holy Site for 124 faith each. Suboptimal might be able to kill the courser with a city strike and pike attack, but I can definitely hurt the pike in return, and that would buy another turn of full strength bombardment for the frigate.

In foreign news, Open Government has fallen, and both Angiers and The Right to Know seem likely to follow soon:



This area is absolutely swarming with Punic frigates, and I have not yet spotted an accessible tile from which this galley can block pillages.

Oh, and I forgot to move governors into the two captured cities. Lots of   this turn. 

So, decision time for our intermediate term strategy. Are we going to try to pillage and capture Indochina, likely requiring a substantial beaker investment into Military Science for Cossacks, or do we go pedal to the metal for Industrialization, in hopeful pursuit of bringing battleships into the war against the Raiders? Both approaches carry considerable uncertainty, and which course we choose determines if we should be trying to capture cities, or simply burning everything we can find until Team Sandbox surrenders.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

neato! My observations as Chief of Staff:

1)A protracted land war is fine in the medium term - you can win a war of attrition with China and Indonesia in land units, due to bottomless faith reserves letting you sustain losses of 1 unit/turn or so. Those muskets will be expensive for China to build and his faith income is way down, so even if he retakes the city, if you can recapture with the knight that's another musket off the table. Keep flowing cheap units south until the Chinese are driven off.

2)You have a window of 3 turns to strip the walls from China's capital before he can establish Victor there, so I'd direct frigates there and let caravels deal with the Chinese navy. Force preservation is the name of the game when it comes to ships, we must have everything possible available on turn 168.

3)Regarding the Galileo push, I think you should still use him to grab Industrialization. The main benefit of Industrialization is that it will enable Coal, which is a vital resource for supporting our ironclads - the sooner we have that online, the more modern combat vessels we can field, and the more likely we are to win the decisive naval encounter. IF we bog down in Indochina, who gives a damn? Ultimately Sub and Roland will keep as long as they can't break out of their island, which they will be unable to do. I'd grab Industrialization, and then start heading towards Cossacks/line infantry.

4)I think Cossacks/LI can be the game winners, though. In fact, I think we have very strong chances here. The key is our faith + the GMC.

When you look at the Raider continent, they have almost no inland production. That's mostly a good thing for them - nearly every city can build ships (contrast it with Indonesia's, sorry sub, stupid city placement). Their total shipyards match ours, might even exceed ours soon. But! They have very little 'slack' production for other things - like, say, land units. Ljub and Woden each have a single inland city, neither of which can approach the quality of the Blueprint or of our Imperator Aleksander - Oryol - Sevastopol - Sissoi Veliki complex, which has contributed countless builders, traders, and other supports to the empire.

What that means is, if we get loose on their continent with raiders, like you're doing to Indochina, it will be very tough for htem to stop it. They'll have to pull cities off ships to hand-build a military to fight. If they DON'T, then their Government Plaza (with Woden's own GMC) and IZs are vulnerable to pillage. In short, they have a real vulnerability there, and attacking it will seriously - I think fatally - strain their ability to produce enough to match all the threats.

So, basically, we want to take hte offense against the raiders at the first opportunity - hell, next turn if we could. Placing our fleet due south of China and due east of hteir continent creates lots of headaches for them - If they go for a first strike, only ljub will be able to move first, and they'll trigger double Australian production. This is the lesser of two evils, because if they cede the initiative to US then we can choose where to strike - either north or south of their main island, and either they split the fleet to deal or they don't split the fleet and give up a city.

Thus, your priority should always be defeating the fleet first, ideally with a first strike (we have insane movement and will for a while, so that should be doable), but also grab a single city - doesn't matter which. Then, once you have that city, all other fronts become irrelevant (let sub reconquer the whole damn island if he wants), all faith gets channeled into unit purchases from that city. You try to kick their support structure to pieces underneath them and eventually Russian might will prevail. If they have a big army ready to stop this, great - it means a correspondingly smaller navy (Russia alone matches their total power, Australia is alllll surplus), so we should be more likely to win on the important front. If they have a small army and a big navy, which is better for them, then they have no easy way of stopping this.

Even if, say, our navy gets beaten, as long as we draw enough blood in the process and are spewing out raiders from our captured city, then we'll rebuild faster than they can and round 2 will go to us. I think this strategy gives us something like 75 - 80% odds to win.

For now, Coursers and Knights are enough to really win against what we've seen Norway field. A later upgrade to Cossacks will probably just be the nail in the coffin. Grab coal to build ironclads, then start chasing those units. I wouldn't worry about building a factory - power plant, the game should be decided before battleships.

[williams482]

That all makes a fair bit of sense.

Our ground offensive in indochina will stall out without more advanced units, of that I'm certain. Frigate-based city strikes can kill or very nearly kill trebuchets in one shot (a garrisoned crossbow clinches the kill), and we can't build bombards because we need the niter for frigates. This also means the walls will stay active, so pillaging operations will be expensive.

So, should we even try to pillage+conquer Indochina? Or are we better off wrecking all their ports from the sea, burning everything we can reach, and massing that faith for more expensive purchases in Raiderland once we can get a toehold there? Our faith income right now is "only" about 300 per turn and doesn't project to increase by much unless we capture more territory or get a significant amenity boost from somewhere. Cossacks will cost roughly 580 faith to purchase, so that's every other turn unless we're drawing from a significant stockpile.

This also leaves a question of how best to spend the large (but not obscene) gold reserve we'll be sitting on. I see two reasonable choices: mass upgrading caravels into ironclads, or mass-building coursers (and probably infantry units as well) and sending them with the fleet into Raiderland, then upgrading whichever ones actually reach the shore into modern attackers. That's the only way we're going to get a rapid critical mass of ground troops in theater, and unlike ironclad upgrades it isn't limited by our unknown coal supply, but it's also no immediate help in the most important theater and largely incompatible with throwing away faith reserves and horse stockpiles in a protracted land war in Indochina.

For reference, discounted courser -> cossack and caravel -> ironclad upgrades are both 145g each. One way or another, upgrades are certainly the most efficient way we can spend that gold.

[williams482]

Also, question for the lurkers:

I know better than Marco or Chevalier what actually happened in the Axis/Raider war. The specific events are relevant only in that the behavior of the Raiders in that war informs my expectations about how will prosecute their war against us. Am I okay sharing a general summary of what went down and my assesment of the other player's strengths/weaknesses/mentalities in this thread, or is that out of line and I should keep it to myself until this game is over? Obviously if I'd been dedlurking from the beginning I'd be totally oblivious and couldn't share any insights, but I lack the ability to compartmentalize what I know enough not to let it inform my own in-game choices here and now.

[williams482]

Yeah, I'm talking battle tactics from past engagements here, not any kind of future plans they were/are making. I legitimately don't remember what they were actually planning for this coming war last time I was reading their thread, or even if they made tactical plans at all.