[Spoilers] Chevalier Gives You Something to Cry Aboot

[williams482]

Turn 256:

Ichabod accepted our trade proposal. Our alliance with Suboptimal is over, and loyalty pressure on Wild and Bruins is greatly increased, but not enough to push them into negatives as long as a governor is in place (although not enough that Bruins can safely starve itself). Unfortunately, one thing I did not properly account for is the damage this does to our culture rate, which plummets from 136.3 last turn to a mere 110.8 this turn. Ideology is now seven turns out, and Reformed Church would need four turns. Unfortunately I think that's still worthwhile, those two battleship fleets are probably necessary to take Compo before Woden does. Finally, our units were ejected from English territory, and Suboptimal has finally laid a cursory claim on the Avalanche spot:



Also I apparently can't read, because I thought great merchant points had been shut off by the World Congress. They were actually doubled, and thus Levi Strauss and his fancy pants are ours. The next merchant is Helena Rubinstein, who also provides a luxury resource. Brazil or Phoenicia should claim them before too long.

Woden's fleet has taken an initial salvo at Nora Batty, but also split up:



They don't appear to have taken significant extra damage, so attacking English units seems unlikely. It also seems implausible that there would be a trade route to pillage all the way out here. So if not that, what are they doing? I'm not sure, but I intend to find out.

Our spy establishes in Vitória and begins the gain sources mission, which will complete in six turns and make him less awful at whatever we ask him to do next. While about it, he spots a modern armor army, and some of the radiation from Woden's latest barrage of nuclear weapons. Manaus, Belo Horizonte, and Rio De Janeiro join Misty Mountains on the list of defenseless cities only Brazilian for the absence of nearby Phoenician troops. Interestingly the Phoenician city of Porto Allegre has taken damage this turn, but the nearby and already crippled Fez was allowed to heal a bit. Further evidence that nobody has striking power in this area that doesn't come from the skies.



My warrior conducts a bit of a test, marching straight into the radiation field that should expire next turn. He'll take either 50 damage or none, depending on when in the turn that damage is processed, and his survivability against literally anything Suboptimal has will be totally unaffected. Our displaced cavalry takes a quick glance at Truly of the Yard's aerodrome, formerly home to one bomber, and finds it empty, then flees into the ocean. The plan for this unit is to come back for some opportunistic pillages when the war breaks out for real.

Flight will be in next turn, at which point we should be able to simultaneously remove the deer camp at penguins with the military engineer, and chop the deer into a balloon with the builder. Our other builder at Red Wings embarks, and will spend his final charge on a fishing boat for some extra gold.

Scores:

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I wonder what the cheapest land unit Woden can make right now is. He literally just needs to waltz in to the cities.

[williams482]

I assume he's obsoleted tanks (480h) and AT crews (400h) by now, so probably Modern ATs for a cool 580h? With helicopters right behind at 600h, but much faster.

As an uninvolved non-entity, the situation over there is hilarious. How much longer can this possibly last?

[Kaiser]

Go Maple Leafs!

[williams482]

Turn 257:

Flight completes:



Our Warrior did take 50 damage from the radiation, which has now evaporated, and Suboptimal has constructed Robert Fife from the ruins of Howard. Nora Batty (Armagh) and Steve Newton (Vilnius) have both been captured and liberated, while Talla Keyali and Misty Mountains are now fully Phoenician property:



Amusingly, we did not actually meet Armagh until I moved my ironclad adjacent to their borders. They now want us to build a harbor.

Oh, and likely the most important news of the Turn, visible in the Flight screenshot above: Woden has (for some reason) opted to make our task at Marina way easier by nuking the city and obliterating all units and defenses. We won't have air cover or balloons in position for a few turns, but with no city strikes or defensive units to worry about, and the only aircraft we know of likely deployed out of range of this front, who cares? Prepare the Emergencies:



Wait, what?

Unlike Regular Sessions, Special Sessions may take place at any moment in the game as long as the previous Session -- Regular or Special -- took place 15 turns or prior on Standard speed. If a Special Session is called but the previous Session was within 15 turns, this Special Session is still called but will wait for the next possible turn or if the next Regular Session is within the 15-turn timeframe, the Special Session will occur at the same time as the Regular Session.

The last Special session happened on t249. That means I can't call the next one until t264, which is, like, a long time in the future. ARRRRRGH.

All right, I have two choices. I can stick with the original plan to exploit this silly bug to get around my even sillier civ "advantage", now with some extra game-mandated delay. Or, I can just do what Firaxis apparently expects Canada to do and denounce, wait five turns while dancing around the English borders screaming "COME AT ME BRO" in hopes of drawing a first strike, then attack. Doing that tips of both Woden and Suboptimal to my intentions, which may or may not be relevant.

Actually, I do have one other option. I can propose a joint war against Suboptimal with Woden. Woden clearly doesn't intend to keep these cities, so he might not care if Canada does the dirty work for him clearing out Suboptimal's inland plants, and he can restore full focus to the Brazilian front. Alternately maybe he wants the cities to himself, or doesn't want to let Canada get too big for their britches. I dunno, but it's worth a shot.

First I denounce Suboptimal, to start the five turn countdown:



How dare you tempt our citizens with your fandy dandy books, and whatever filthy trinkets you yanked up out of the ground and stuck in a glass box on a shelf in some outrageously ostentatious hallway. Disgraceful.

Now, my attempt to bribe Woden into letting us have a little fun:



Woden moves after Suboptimal, so if Woden either accepts this deal or offers some equivalent back to us, we get the first strike and can score Marina for almost no cost. The city will be totally useless for the next nine turns as the radiation dissipates, so there's that, but it is a city!

And of course, we have designs on more than just the one. First, we deploy our artillery division, supported by a supply convoy and a general, and spearheaded by a column of tanks. They encounter Suboptimal's medieval superscout on the tile where we would ideally plant Lightning, so there will be no surprises here, but there was nothing remotely sneaky about this plan anyway. They will push through the hills and into the Ogaden pass, intent on shelling and capturing Compo. With the rail network pillaged this will not be a fast journey, something I would have done well to plan for, but it's too late to get a civilian unit up here to make useful repairs. These artillery will have four movement with the general and supply convoy in play, enough to cover two hill tiles per turn. Fast enough, I hope.



Our second group is even less subtle in their placement:



Bring it, you filthy museum-loving englishmen! You want us? Come get us! Because if you don't we're going to be sitting here bored for a while...

Research begins on Radio, which reveals Aluminium. The boost is to build a National Park, something we are extremely ill-equipped to do. After that, we probably go Plastics into Synthetic Materials for helicopters, and hopefully get some Aerodromes up so we can actually get something out of Advanced Flight. We want two for the Synthetic Materials boost. No relevant cities have extra district slots now, but Penguins will hit pop 13 in three turns (at the expense of one scientist specialist, now a worthwhile tradeoff), and either of Blackhawks or Blues can be chopped to their next pop threshold relatively soon. For the moment, Blackhawks follows it's military academy with a spy, due in 5 turns. Penguins, as planned, switches to an Observation Balloon, our military engineer removes the deer camp, and the builder harvests the deer for 199h into the 240h balloon. It will complete next turn, and be on it's way to the front immediately after.

Scores:

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

It wouldn't be PBEM18 without one last undocumented 'feature' screwing Canada, now would it?

Anyway, we bestir ourselves at last! For the glory of Lord Stanley!

[TheArchduke]

I salute your tenacity and audaciousness! Go forth and conquer.

It will probably end with a nuclear stab attack on you, but by god you have shown your merit!

[williams482]

Turn 258:

So, are we at war?



Indeed we are! It seems Woden was perfectly willing to let us do his dirty work. Worth noting that this drops us to a truly horrific gold deficit and cuts our science and culture rates as well, due to a whole bunch of trade routes terminating, but all should be available for reassignment.

But first, some interesting developments on the other front:



Steve Newton is a city state no longer, back in Brazilian hands (and with full fortifications? A quirk of city states not having Steel yet, I imagine). Even more interesting, Ichabod has revived Kaiser's robotic corpse in pursuit of some purpose unclear to me. I could trade two diplo favor for 8 of robo-kaiser's 10g, but that seems both minimally beneficial and unsporting.

Oh, and even more significant than this casual resurrection, Woden has managed to properly raze Belo Horizonte, taking out a major industrial center and the last remaining buffer between Phoenician wastelands and the capital:



So, boring stuff first. Can these seven freed-up traders rejuvenate our economy? Curitiba (1f, 1h, 22g, 1 faith) and Ed Mercer (2h, 20g, 1 beaker, 1 clef, 2 faith) seem to be the best cities available, both slightly inferior to the Foggy Dewhurst routes we were using, but still pretty solid. Where possible I prioritize the Ed Mercer routes, valuing that one culture over the two extra gold. Unfortunately even after that and some gold-maximizing tile micro, we're still only pulling in 44 gpt. That won't get us enough gold to upgrade both frigates for another three turns, and Reformed Church is two turns out. Next turn I'll want to switch off it to dump a turn of research into Ideology, to avoid spending an extra turn in Professional Army for no added benefit.

Blues completed it's armory and starts a military academy, due in 6. Kings finished an AA gun and Wild a trader, both start tanks due in 9 and 10 respectively. Penguins, done with it's balloon, resumes the AA gun due in 2.

As for the war, step one is pretty clearly to take the layup Woden has given us, and evaluate from there. There's a solid case to be made for trying to pillage the campus and theater square first, but those are actually pretty out of the way, and I don't want Woden to slip here and burn the city himself. Plus, the extra visibility from Marina's borders may be useful. And chances are the city will flip back before too long anyway, so we can pillage it then. I send in a cavalry:



Unfortunately, that unit is now doomed. It took 52 damage attacking the totally defenseless city, and will succumb to the radiation next turn. On the Bright side, we scored a nice cache of great works, and bumped our culture rate by 14.7 per turn. The two great works of writing are immediately transferred to Blackhawks, but apparently the artefacts cannot be moved there (probably some dumb thing about each museum only supporting one archeologist and taking incredibly hamfisted measures to enforce that) so they may not be ours forever. Even after transfering Magnus, the loyalty situation in this city is quite shaky: 



Because of the radiation, there is very little we can actually build here. The best option actually seems to be a theater square festival, which turns our 5.5h into 0.8 clefs. Better than nothing! On the bright side, there is a lot of additional culture we can work, breaking even foodwise with one silk tile and two theater square specialists.

Now for the other obvious moves. Our support units race for the front, including our military engineer. Annoyingly, the AA gun is boosted by the supply convoy but not the general, despite the fact that the supply convoy (also a support unit, and also from an era boosted by the general) does get extra movement. I am concerned about Suboptimal bombing our artillery, which will leave us unable to take cities without Phonecian assistance, so I let the supply convoy hang back a bit to catch the AA gun in it's effect radius while the rest of that column advances. Two of the artillery have surplus movement left while trapped behind other units, I use that movement to take the Crew Weapons promotion, clearly the right one now that I know their primary role will not be attempting to shoot invading ground troops.

Our cavalry army comes ashore, which in retrospect may not have been a great idea:



He will at least occupy a few units for the turn, which makes my decision making with the others simpler. Charge. The radiation field makes things more difficult than they otherwise would be, but I don't think my prefered cautious advance will work out very well here. Suboptimal's military is stretched terribly thin, there's a limited amount of counterattacking he can actually do, and he already has two targets (Marina and that cav army) which I can't protect any more than I already am. Every unit pushes forward as much as it can without ending it's turn on an irradiated tile, which leaves us with this:



We'll see how Suboptimal responds.

Scores:

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

We have now conquered more cities than we lost - victory!

I don't know why sub is continuing to spew out settlers - does he think he can found cities faster than Phoenica can raze them? o_O

It looks like we have two possible objectives: Campo, and Robert Fife. Campo is the richer prize and would secure our hold on the southeast coast and on conquered Marina. It'd also be a key stepping stone to an advance on Dewhurst itself. If we could get our artillery, well-covered by AA, into position to shell the city - which should be possible from just north of Campo, with a river to protect us - then there's the chance to take the capital for our own. As long as Phoenicia keeps up its far more major threat to sub's core, to which we are effectively a sideshow. But a sideshow with teeth.

Robert Fife can't possibly build anything without chop support, so it seems mostly irrelevant for now. The decisive theater is definitely the south.

What's our concession situation? We are officially Conceded, right?

[civac2]

I remember that you retracted the concession so you could watch the nuclear mayhem. May not have been the last word on the issue.