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

[roland of gilead]

I am surprisingly nervous for a fill in.

Lets see how it goes.

[williams482]

Turn 171:

Military Science completes:



As reported, Ljubljana has declared war on me. To my great surprise, they haven't attacked any of my ships, although they did teleport Homer to Scott Brown and Ovid to He Was My Brother >. Here is Ljubljana's deployment:



And here is Woden's:



Those Norwegian ironclads are far enough back that if (big if) I can do enough damage to the Punic fleet on this turn, I can get everything out of their reach, then I can outrun them along Ljubljana's coast, seizing cities (and getting free Urban Defenses walls) as I go. If I can't, well, we're probably dead.

Also very important on this turn, I need to hit Abugida before they can possibly get an ironclad completed. I have two bombardment/rolling barrage frigates and one ironclad in position which will definitely be sufficient to finish the job, I just need to clear an unobstructed path for them. This means we attack the left side of Ljubljana's formation first, and we make very sure not to use the three ships specifically required for the Abugida assault.

All right, tactics. Broadly speaking, the correct approach in these situations is to hit with the melee ships first, then use the ranged ships to get kills. This means that the tile emptied out by killing an enemy ship remains empty, and you can have one of your own ships attack from it. This isn't strictly optimal from a single combat damage ratio perspective, but the strategic benefit of getting more attacks obviously blows that out of the water.

I have a net of zero coal right now. I produce 9 per turn, my ships currently consume 10. Thus, My ironclads are getting a -1 strength debuf. I do have two single ironclads in the Kara Sea which I can combined to bring my empire level consumption to -9, neutral, but this does not remove the debuf. Rats. Had I understood this mechanic better, I would have made sure to combine those units last turn. I hope that doesn't come back to bite me.

First I move forward one of my rearmost ironclads onto a tile I know I will be attacking from, and a rearmost Embolon caravel to a tile just out of Ljubljana's ZoC, revealing... something I apparently didn't take a picture of. Oops. It's a bunch of ships, use your imagination. 

I know from which ships have bonuses and which don't that the Admiral is on the pinned tile. If I can slip a unit through to chase him off, this battle gets much easier in a hurry. And on a related note: based on the graphics, it looks like my privateers don't suffer from ZoC the way my other ships do? If that's real (and a google search corroborates), it might give me a real shot at displacing that otherwise well protected Admiral. I bring another caravel up from the back for a peek, and clearly Ljubljana was not taking chances here: the Admiral is guarded by a caravel fleet (although not a promoted one). This won't be an easy task.

With that a given, is what I'm trying to do here possible? Because of that island, the tiles from which I can shoot into the center of that formation are limited, and my ability to slip ironclads through without being trapped by ZoC is also impaired. This means that I would need to kill one of the caravels between the middle and the edge of this line to drive a real dagger strike into this formation and drive off the Admiral. And Ljubljana has played this very well: the two Embolon caravels at their disposal are each occupying one of these high value tiles. Tricky, tricky.

Is there a way for me to attack the other side of this formation, set the edge, and wrap around? I can tell from the support bonuses that the right side is much thinner than the enormous blob of ships on the left side. I would "only" need to kill four units (Embolon caravel fleet, caravel fleet, two single caravels). I could hit the Embolon caravel with an ironclad fleet and two of my four Line of Battle frigates, which would average 32, 30, and 34 damage. If I moved both privateers up for flanking support, that becomes an average of 38, 31, and 35, a probable kill. I would then be able to throw another ironclad and an unprompted frigate at the unpromoted caravel fleet 1NE of the reef tile (which does NOT benefit from an admiral), averaging 69 and 37, an extremely likely kill. With both of those caravels dead, I can have both privateers shoot through the gap in this formation. One of them shoots the easternmost single caravel for 37, and an Embolon caravel fleet would follow with 82. The other single caravel does benefit from the admiral, so we'll have to use our third ironclad for 82, and the second privateer finishes the job with 41. And we should have our opening, through which the rest of our fleet can start to pour through.

This plan puts an enormous amount of faith in the whims of the RNG, especially against the caravel in the reef, but I don't see any better options. Ljubljana clearly intended to blunt our first strike by compressing the engagement zone and preventing us from being able to use the full force of our fleet, and the only way we're going to win this is if we can break out of here. So we're going in.

First though, we need to spend the strikes we can against the left side of the formation, while our admiral is still over here. Our ironclad fleet who moved to open the turn attacks a caravel fleet for 62, taking 18. Our southernmost unpromoted frigate fleet pushes forward just enough to deliver a fatal 38. Attacks from any other tiles should be boosted from this admiral's ultimate position after the battle to the northeast is resolved, so this is sufficient. The ironclad attacks for... 30. FUCK.

(god damn it, no picture again? What am I doing?)

Well, that's bad. Now my two frigate strikes will average 30 and 34, close enough that I could get lucky but not a good bet to get that all important kill. Can I sneak another attack from anywhere else? The Privateers are right out, I need their ZoC ignoring abilities. I could stick a frigate 1W of the island to take a third shot if necessary, which would hurt my ability to attack this flank but will be worth doing if needed.

LoB Frigate #1 shoots for... 29. Eh. LoB #2 shoots for... 28. Eww, but largely irrelevant. Our contingency frigate delivers the fatal blow, and that's first blood to Russia:



Our ironclad moves to fill the void, and attacks the caravel fleet for... 61 (taking 13). Our lightly damaged Bombardment/Rolling Barrage frigate steps up to deliver the fatal 39. Two down. Privateer #1 hits the single caravel for 34, and an Embolon caravel steps in to finish the job, taking 7 damage an earning a promotion. Our final available ironclad (excepting the one we hope to send to Abugida) smacks the other single caravel for 84, and the privateer delivers a finishing blow. We're in:



Now. We've spent our hardest hitters, but there's plenty of caravels and frigates roaring and ready to go. How can we get rid of that Admiral? We'll need to kill the caravel fleet due east of it, then the caravel fleet protecting it directly. Attacking spaces are certainly at a premium here, and we're only slightly favored to kill with two hits. I flank the easter caravel with two of my own, then attack with an embolon ship for 57. This was a mistake: I really want to get the kill with a frigate so I can use a backlines Embolon caravel as one of my attackers against the Admiral. I attack with the other caravel, hoping for a low damage roll, and I get it: 37. A rolling barrage frigate finishes the job. Now I move up two Embolon caravels to flank the Admiral. We'll need a frigate strike to get enough damage to kill, and we need one of these caravels to land the final blow so the Admiral is actually teleported away. I want that to be the northern of my two caravels, to open that tile back up for attacks against frigates. The southern of the two attacks for 33, taking 23. An unpromoted frigate should average 34, then the Embolon caravel will kill easily. Frigate actually does 27, caravel delivers the kill. Leif Erickson is displaced to Mitla, able to return next turn, but largely out of the engagement zone. Now to try to take advantage.

Sadly, it is obvious by now that we cannot possibly break through and hit Abugida this turn. We're just going to have to hope Ljubljana's timetable on ironclads is slightly longer than I projected, and do as much damage as we possibly can with all ships. And that is... not gonna be enough.

I made a tactical error by failing to move one of my caravels up for a flanking bonus before attacking with my last ironclad. That plus a slightly substandard damage roll meant that the followup frigate shot couldn't kill that Embolon caravel, meaning another caravel had to finish the job. This means that we can't tag team one of the single frigates with two caravels (for lack of tiles, only one is left) and then kill the next with out last LoB frigate. With the confined spaces we're working in a slight error like that has nasty cascading effects, and I've exacerbated things by not optimizing my unit moves: I have several caravels that should have been able to get involved but couldn't because they were moved forward, then back, and one of my privateers was forced to block a tile which could have been used by another unit for the same reason. Those six (SIX!!!) caravels rendered totally useless by bad maneuvering and confined spaces settle for guarding my rear frigates against isolated Norwegian attacks, and we wind up deployed as so:



Total damage done (I think): six caravel fleets, two single caravels, and one frigate fleet sunk, one frigate fleet and one single frigate injured.

I made a valiant effort here, but I did not do well enough and this turn has gone very poorly on the whole. Credit to Ljubljana: they used the terrain to their advantage and completely blocked off any chance I might have had to hit Abugida, then forced me to fight my way through the more durable, less valuable caravels instead of their mass of frigates in order to escape. I was only able to break out at all because of my two privateers, or I would have been hopelessly packed in and likely forced to retreat. Now, Ljubljana still has more than half their fleet (and the more dangerous half at that). They are going to kill probably 6-10 ships on their turn, presumably mostly frigates. I'll be able to hit back and may ultimately win this battle, but I see little hope of taking a city and ultimately winning the war. This is not a concession, there's more game left to play, but I give the Raiders 95% to win from here on.

Anyhoo, on the the frivolous stuff. Woden left a Berserker where our city can hit it, but not very hard:



I purchase a Cossack here to keep any pillaging shenanigans to a minimum. Our limiter on pillage units in Raiderland isn't going to be faith.

Research begins on rifling, for lack of better options. On the other side of the world, Woden has an embarked archer in an inconvenient spot. I attack it with a caravel fleet at +28 strength and do... 48 damage. That should average 92. I attack again with two quads at -11 strength, I would have expected 19 and 21, I get 10 and 11. Do embarked units take half damage for some reason? Or am I just that unlucky in this largely irrelevant theater. Anyway, the frigate finishes the job, and my ironclad clumsily stumbles into this mess:





Well. That was stupid. I opt to back away slowly and hope Woden, uhh, completely forgets that my ships exist and goes after Scum FXXX Flower Boy instead of sauntering up and killing them. Yeah, we're doing great today.


I hope the turn pace picks up, but I doubt we've got more than a couple turns left to go in this one. Ouch.

[roland of gilead]

I think you do do less damage to embarked units for some weird reason frankly they should be the ones taking more damage.

oh goody an ironclad to waltz through my ships.

[roland of gilead]

On the other side of the world, Woden has an embarked archer in an inconvenient spot. I attack it with a caravel fleet at +28 strength and do... 48 damage. That should average 92. I attack again with two quads at -11 strength, I would have expected 19 and 21, I get 10 and 11. Do embarked units take half damage for some reason? Or am I just that unlucky in this largely irrelevant theater.

This is a display bug. Embarked units benefit from applicable bonuses like +5 military alliance but it is not shown and the projected damage displayed is also wrong. If you hover over a Norwegian ship you can see what bonuses are applicable and manually calculate. In this case I think there was a hidden +12 which is consistent with the outcomes.

Very poor that we are still getting these bugs after 8 years. 

Unacceptable really

[williams482]

That checks out, thanks Thrawn. Totally consistent with the rest of the game experience, so I guess it's got that going for it.

[roland of gilead]

woden is busy killing your ships right now Williams

[williams482]

If he can reach my ships in any significant numbers then I've screwed up even worse than I thought, and we are definitely dead. As opposed to almost definitely.

[roland of gilead]

I have the turn and am home in 4 or 5 hrs so we will know soon.

I will post some pics of your theatre or war.

For a while at least we have the production advantage. May count for something.

[roland of gilead]

Played my turn and shuffled my troops.

at a push i may be able to bottleneck dido.

not sure how much trouble you are in Williams but it looks like quite a bit to me.

i will post the pic soon.

[roland of gilead]