[Spoilers] Haram hopefully reports

[Haram]

Yeah, sorry about that comment on upgrades. I just tried to avoid it as much as I could. With this eco 1wealth is worth at least 2 beakers, so upgrading a mace to the rifle is a cost of ~280 beakers, while draft is so cheap.

[scooter]

Yeah, sorry about that comment on upgrades. I just tried to avoid it as much as I could. With this eco 1wealth is worth at least 2 beakers, so upgrading a mace to the rifle is a cost of ~280 beakers, while draft is so cheap.

No need to be sorry! You definitely aren't wrong that it's pretty costly. I'm also not quite used to an eco tilted this extremely towards hammers, so I appreciate the reality check.

Hopefully this 1 turn sorting out of turn order will be an anomaly before things get going, or else this game will get called before the war even happens.

[scooter]

So, Haram. I think I understand a little better why you were so insistent on Dreylin. I think I had the idea in my head that his military was pretty intimidating, which combined with his newly-discovered Rifling sounded a little grim. Welp, I was very wrong.

Dreylin accepted OB with me, so I quickly scurried my sentry Knight in to scout him out. (I actually didn't realize he was in Mercantilism, but all I care about is the intel.) His border cities were mildly defended, so I figured he had a cat + hitter stack somewhere.



Welp, that's not it. I found his Great Lighthouse city of Kettle, which he kindly build Notre Dame in.



That one is, shall we say, lightly defended. I did eventually find his super stack.



I'm using the word "super" generously. I'm saying all this not to mock Dreylin at all because he's obviously played a good game in a tough field. I'm mostly just mocking my misunderstanding at what his army was. He's got 2 catapults on his mainland right now and about 7 workshops. I went on to scout his capital Toaster, which meant on this turn I got eyes on every city on his mainland except his two easternmost cities. Here was his entire mainland army:

1 Great General
8 Muskets
9 Knights
2 longbow
1 xbow
2 catapults
2 Praetorians
4 axe
4 archers
5-6ish warriors

So he's got 2 cats, 17 real units, and a great general (so 18 real units assuming he free-upgrades an outdated unit). He is in slavery, so I expect him to see the writing on the wall at some point and start whipping, and he does have Rifling. So I do expect him to look much tougher in 10 turns.

The goal will be to use Frigates to control the water between his mainland and his main island (just south of here) and prevent him from reinforcing via water. He has no Frigates currently, but he can build them.

He's saving gold now too.



Not that great, so hordes of upgrades aren't imminent. I think he'll be tempted to use his money to go for Steel anyway. Granted, we're only 750gpt or so at 0% during a golden age, but Dreylin is cottage'd far more heavily.


I upgraded around 5 galleys (sorry Haram!) to bring our total to 11, and I queued up a couple more. I want to be able to load a minimum of 40 Rifles on boats (with more in wave 2) and drop them on Dreylin's land T0 of the war. A lot of his coastal cities are sitting next to hills, so honestly I don't know how he'll kill Rifles on hills with 2 catapults.

After drafting 4 Rifles and upgrading some galleys, I took a shot of the soldier count right before pressing enter, and I added 132k of power at end of turn alone, and the number of units completing next turn will be much bigger. Slightly delayed power graph:



Any questions? Consider this post my formal apology to Haram for doubting his plan.

[Haram]

Some random thoughts:
- if you want second commando knight you must build a stable, to produce 7 XP knight. I was delaying the decision in hope to hunt some Joey's scout (or use mace->rifle, but it's only 3-mover without morale)
- you can prevent Dreylin from exploring your teritorial water with privateers
- Dreylin doesn't have Rifling, nor is able to produce Frigates. He is still missing PrintPress, ReplParts, Rifling, Astro.

[scooter]

Some random thoughts:
- if you want second commando knight you must build a stable, to produce 7 XP knight. I was delaying the decision in hope to hunt some Joey's scout (or use mace->rifle, but it's only 3-mover without morale)

Yeah I was thinking about this, and I'm not quite sure how much I care about a second Commando right now. Against Dreylin it's just about overwhelming him, and all his crucial cities are plenty exposed anyway. I'm hanging onto the second general for now. It's tempting to use it to sprinkle XP to make a handful of Amphibious Rifles which sounds more useful on this map. Still thinking about it, though.

If I can save the GG for later in the game when a well-timed Commando could be a game-ender, I may just do that. I don't know, I'm on the fence about this and could be pursuaded either way.

- Dreylin doesn't have Rifling, nor is able to produce Frigates. He is still missing PrintPress, ReplParts, Rifling, Astro.

He does have Rifling as of last turn, but no Rifles yet. He hasn't whipped since discovering it. Speaking of.

- you can prevent Dreylin from exploring your teritorial water with privateers

He hasn't really tried to do this so far, but I'll be watching for it.

Basically, I think he's just checked out on this game. He's been logging 10 minutes/turn which is not enough times to plan a defense. Then these past two turns when I played two turns in quick succession (meaning I drafted 8 times in about 3 hours), he then logged in after that and cranked through another quick turn with 0 whips. He just dove into a new game and is posting about that constantly, so honestly I think he's on autopilot here. At some point here he'll figure it out, but the longer he takes the more trouble he's in.

[scooter]

Haram kindly informed me via PM that I was mixing up Dreylin and Jowy, which makes a lot of sense. Figuring out the geopolitical situation and keeping everyone straight is the hardest part of diving into a game you haven't been following.

ANYWAY, the short of it is that Dreylin really does not have Rifling yet. Cool.

I had a few more screenshots sitting around, so I'll dump those into a post now. I took a few screenshots of what Mackoti was up to, because I know he won't do it.





Mack dropped several of these random invasion forces. Here's his primary naval stack, although he does have plenty more.



Also seems to be scouting TBS:



Standard stuff for him - I've never been so thoroughly watched by an opponent before playing against Mackoti in PB13.

----------

I took a shot of my military composition as of the middle of T161:



Here's my build screen, mostly so Haram can yell at me if I'm doing something obviously nonsensical or counter-productive to what he had planned. There is one that I already know about.



I mixed in a few Gren builds thinking Dreylin would be able to mass a few Rifles in time. Obviously that now makes no sense. If I can get into the game before it rolls, I'll swap those back to Rifles. If not, whatever, keeping a few on-hand will be useful as deterrent to the neighbors who are sporting Rifles.

[scooter]

Forgot to add - Mackoti has played his turn since I took those screenshots, and he didn't capture anything from Tsargon, which surprised me slightly (IIRC there was a second city he targeted too). I haven't been in-game though, so I don't know any more than that.

[scooter]

As much as I feel rusty diving into a game of Civ after all this time, I have to admit I do feel in my element in this stage of the game. By my count, this will be the 6th or 7th (depends on what counts) Guns N Galleons war I've fought in Pitboss alone. The logistics of it all are very complex, but it's very fun to me. Anyway, I've found the rest of Dreylin's army.



This is his south island which won't come into play for a little while. The real rest of the army is here on the Tsargon border.



Still not super intimidating, but those cats + his 9 Knights + his GG is enough to wipe out one Rifle stack. Not enough to save him though unless I screw it up, which is very possible. I've done it before.

This is T162, and the plan right now is to declare on T164 and dump 60 units in his land (34 of them Rifles) in 2-3 locations. Actually it'll be a little more than that because I'm not accounting for a few frontline drafts in that number. I've got 12 full galleons ready to go by that turn (with a 13th one turn behind) combined with a bunch of land units that will march right up to his front city. I've decided I don't want to give him any more time to figure out what's going on and start whipping - I'd rather just start doing damage ASAP since I've got sufficient numbers to do so. Those 60 units are basically just a wave 1 - I'll probably do some galleon chaining to bring a second wave in.

I'll save the X's and O's stuff until later when I've got more time. I'll just say two things.

1) I do have a tentative commando plan that may or may not come to fruition. Cross your fingers.
2) Along those lines - I've got a few Nav1 galleons (thank you, Haram), and they're probabaly going to prove very useful.

I'll end for now with the power graph.



Also, I'm going to try to play after Dreylin next turn (163) with the plan to declare after him on T164. I played mostly before him this turn, but after an hour I wasn't done, and I had to leave and then finish after him. With my turns being longer, it just seems more practical to play after him.

[scooter]

Some high-level war plans. I've got three prongs to this, the northern boats, southern boats, and the land force. I'm going to try to make some ground quickly at the beginning while half his army is a few turns away, and then I'll try to bait him into a big fight. I can afford to lose hammers 2-3x as quickly as him, so even if I get a dozen rifles wiped out by his main stack, that's totally fine as long as I get to take his main stack down in return. I'm bringing a good group of maces along too, hopefully just to absorb catapult fire and serve as warm bodies. Fortunately, several of his front cities are sitting next to hills, so cracking rifles on hills will be pretty rough for him.

I said I'd drop units onto 2-3 locations. The main question is how quickly he reacts with his reserve stack by Tsargon. If he starts pushing it forward immediately, I may be a bit more conservative. If he sits on his hands for another turn, I'll be more aggressive because he definitely won't be able to crack 6 rifles on a hill with 9 Knights, especially if I give 1-2 of them Guerilla.

Here's a rough composition of my 3 prongs. These are conservative estimates - I think I can squeeze a few more units into the land force. Consider these the minimum numbers that will be in his land on T164 if plans don't change.

6 Galleons: 14 rifles, 2 Knight, 1 treb, 1 mace
7th Galleon 1 turn later, unsure what it will contain

6 Galleons: 12 rifles, 2 cats, 1 treb, 3 knights

8 rifles, 6 knights, 8 maces, 1 cat, 1 treb

Even looking at these numbers, I know I'm missing a few, because I'll have a couple more trebs than that ready. Anyway, as I mentioned this is a wave 1 - I'll return probably half my Galleons to go pick up more units and/or send them by land.

Here's an overview shot of the battlefield.



There are 3 signs here. Let's go south-to-north.

"South Stack" - all the land units will move here on T164, and either all or most of the southern boats will land here too. I may keep a few units loaded up for the next phase depending on how Dreylin reacts, because all the units I'm dropping off there is certainly overkill.

"North Stack" - this will be a smaller group landing from northern boats. I haven't decided whether to drop them all off here or save 2 boats. There's also a good chance I'll bypass this entirely (using the land force for Waffle after it gets Rice), and land them all on...

"3rd stack of rifles?" - What'd I'd like to do is use a pair of nav-1 galleons (the staging sign is wrong) to drop 6 Rifles on this tile and dare him to attack them. If Dreylin can get his whole army in range of this tile, I may think twice about this, but I'd be happy to give up 6 rifles for the immense cost it would take to remove them. If I do land on this tile, the boats will be visible to Dreylin, but honestly if he needs sight on those boats to figure it out, he's in more trouble than I thought. So in short, I haven't yet decided if I want to drop nothing, 6 rifles, or 18 units on this tile yet. TBD.

I've also got a possible commando play down here. It'll require Dreylin not thinking things through all the way, though. I'll leave it ambiguous so the lurkers can try to guess the plan in the lurker thread, and I'll explain it tomorrow.



One caveat: I'm not interesting in razing Kettle (or any of his core cities) unless doing so would allow me to wipe out Dreylin's stack. No more hints.

[scooter]

The jig is up.



Notice the worker I boxed. He saw my staging tile, immediately fired a golden age, and then whipped 3 times - his first whips since I resumed drafting. Granted, he made no effort to move up his eastern stacks of units, so who knows. Next turn I'll declare after Dreylin plays and my units will reach their shores. I do have a final tally of units that will be participating. I realized I could add Nav1 to the 13th Galleon, so it'll participate too.

attacking coffee:
------
2 Galleons: 5 rifles (3 5xp), 1 treb

attacking waffle:
------
5 Galleons: 11 rifles, 2 knights, 1 mace, 1 treb

south staging (some may stay on boats)
------
6 Galleons: 12 rifles, 3 knights, 2 cats, 1 treb

attacking rice via land
------
6 rifles, 7 knights, 8 maces, 1 cat

Total: 61 (34 Rifles)

Some stray notes:

1) Gonna go ahead and drop 6 units on the tile next to Coffee - the hill tile. Going with just 5 rifles rather than 6 is just daring him to attack. I'm going to give at least one of them Guerilla 2 most likely. He's got a lot of units that can theoretically hit that tile, but with only 2 catapults on hand, it'll be a bloodbath if he does attack. I really hope he does, even if it means I lose them all.

2) Quite a few small groups of units will be joining in the turns immediately following, including around a half dozen rifles.

3) I'm going light on siege, but that is relatively intentional here. I do have a few trebs that will be a couple turns behind (and are therefore not counted here), but all in all I didn't prioritize it heavily because Dreylin's only good units are Knights which Rifles will shred, and he doesn't have many particularly large stacks. Not that I wouldn't like to have more (I do and I will), but I prioritized Rifles above all else. My original plan was to attack closer to T170, and part of moving up the timeline meant some siege would be late arriving, but given what I know about his army, I think it's the right trade-off.

4) Goal of this invasion is speed speed speed, even if it means I take some rough losses. I don't want to give Dreylin time to whip himself some collateral, and I'm concerned about Mackoti and TBS interfering in some way, which is really the main thing that could go wrong.

Speaking of, I'm concerned at how quickly Tsargon is dying - lost 4 cities to TBS and Mack this past turn.



That's all he's got left. Mackoti cannot even declare on me until T170, and while TBS could, he's behind me enough in tech that it would be foolish. Still makes me a little nervous that they could get opportunistic. Doing my best to be prepared for the possibility - particularly from Mackoti on T170. TBS attacking would be suicide, but Mackoti attacking would merely be questionable. My front with him is NOT emptied out to say the least.

I've got some pictures to better visualize the attack plan mentioned above, but those will have to wait until tomorrow.

Should be declaring tomorrow night if the turn keeps moving at the current pace, and late Saturday night (or possibly Sunday) should be the start of the fireworks. Nobody is watching this game, so... tell your friends and enemies.