Brick by Brick (Spoiler Alert!)

[TheHumanHydra]

As promised ...




Obviously this is all very preliminary and can and will change as the situation develops.

... Okay, so I had this whole big long operational-orders document typed up in like pseudo-legit military-speak - like for example:

I. Enemy dispositions and intentions

It is believed that the principal mass of Harrian troops is stationed in one of the three fogged tiles at and around the marker "Stack (or adj.)?" A subsidiary group may be located in the singular fogged tile 2N of Forest Green. Substantial numbers of troops are currently occupied with city garrison duties throughout the state. It is believed that all these groups will concentrate upon the declaration of war at or around Barnet, facing the principal invasion force. Past experience (direct and vicarious) strongly suggests that they will undertake a counteroffensive against the principal invasion force at the earliest opportunity; prior to this they will develop their strength in a local strong point, such as Barnet or, in extreme circumstances, retire to further such positions as necessary before launching the counterattack. As such, it is necessary to maintain the absolute cohesion of the principal invasion force until the main mass of the enemy has been met and decisively defeated, lest the enemy take advantage of any dispersion to engage and defeat its components piecemeal.

II. Our dispositions and intentions ...

... but I got tired of writing it, so now Grumpy Hydra will just tell you what's going on straight-up:

The main invasion force (southeast on the map, going northwest) will march on Barnet, ignoring side-stuff like Forest Green unless it's really cheap to take so as to maintain its strength (see excerpt above) and hopefully fight Old Harry's main army somewhere in there up to Altrincham, depending how far he wants to retreat first. For the purposes of this exercise we're assuming I win, 'cause otherwise I'll probably have to concede the game. At that point, if I haven't already, I take Altrincham, then fan out (Old Harry's army being no more) and take (clockwise) Preston, Matlock, Darlington, Crewe, and if necessary Exeter all at once, causing Old Harry to concede. Follow-up troops (or Azza) can take Forest Green and Ipswich. Meanwhile, at a point yet-to-be-decided, I move on the north with my troops currently gathering there (as soon as next turn with a handful or later with more). They can attack multiple points, perhaps threatening Halifax and Lancaster or moving on Kettering and Exeter (or both, eventually). Turn 179 I can hit Kettering with amphibious troops from my island too. Likewise on Old Harry's island on an uncertain turn, launching out of Fort Dawnguard (if it doesn't get revolted) - hence the ironclad there (he has triremes).

The idea is that my main army needs to stick together to stay as strong as possible to actually be able to defeat Old Harry's army, so as to avoid what happened last time or worse. The forces in the north (not very substantial) will be able to hold some of Old Harry's troops there or take his cities if he concentrates (which he should). Just not sure whether I should make the threat obvious from the get-go or not - wouldn't want him to kill that force while he masses, then turn south to fight my main army without having to split his strength. The thought with the north and those amphibious attacks is to create those same kinds of low-resources situations we faced in the north last time that resulted in me taking Lancaster - I can't really reinforce my main army that well while in enemy territory, so I deploy my fresh troops where they can make a difference, hopefully stretching him thin - last time (and against Serdoa) I was able to produce good results this way at tech parity; this time my random drafted units are way more powerful than his random drafted units and hopefully should be able to accomplish even more (hopefully I'm not over-optimistic), taking cities cheaply while he's forced to focus on the main effort elsewhere.

Anyway, there are so many possibilities (Old Harry kills my SoD; Azza intervenes in some way; Old Harry ignores my SoD and sends his into my south [!], Old Harry somehow conjures up machine-guns, Old Harry has enough withdrawal cavalry to kill all my cannon and take out my teeth, Old Harry lands in my southeast or northwest, etc.) I can't even begin to go through them all (what's that saying about plans?) but that's kinda the blueprint I'm following to hopefully kill his army and raze as many of his cities as possible (no sense keeping them now, that'd just let him or Azza take them back and defeat me; this is the end of the game as far as I'm concerned). Hopefully it'll go well and everyone'll concede at that point. If my stack dies I probably have to concede, or at least offer a draw. I have no desire to drag this out, as much as I'm excited for this war. Azza may tech Astronomy (he's on Optics now) and try and boat all my cities before the end; will have to draft to counter that at some point or put ironclads everywhere; hopefully I don't do so too late; that would piss me off. Hopefully he doesn't switch from fighting Dhalphir and run a stack into my lands. Hopefully Dhalphir doesn't run his stack-o'-trash into my southeast where I have, like, no units. Hopefully I don't become depressed again. At least infantry get good odds against, like, everything. Anyway, till next time, God save the King, Keep Calm and Carry On, etc.

What a poorly-written post. Let me know if it's incomprehensible. At least the picture's pretty. Good night,

THH

[Fintourist]

Forgot to comment that the picture is awesome!

[TheHumanHydra]

Thanks!

[TheHumanHydra]

Turn 175: War!

As planned, I declared war on Old Harry and moved my main army into his territory here:




The big unknown of the turn for me was how much war-weariness would remain after our time at peace. The answer is ... far better than I perhaps expected!

Before declaring war:




And after:




Sadly, my demographics took a plunge, with troop maintenance and my decision to run 10% on the espionage slider for a turn (you'll see the results of that in the screenshots below):




Note though that Old Harry still hasn't crossed the two-million-man mark in army size; I had expected him to between turns. This does have the positive side-effect of allowing me to boast about the size of my army at the start of the campaign:




(I'm being facetious; I hold no illusions as to the difficulty of this campaign, or its potential outcomes.)

Let's look at the fronts, where my war-plans have solidified somewhat (depending on what Old Harry does). First, though, I'll do a quick tl;dr recap of my previous post, covering the general strategic conception:

1. Main army (106 units) advances through Old Harry's southeast, hopefully destroying his main army and taking Barnet.
2. Secondary forces attack Old Harry's north to stretch his forces thin and/or take cities cheaply.

Similar to the previous war, only with more units and infantry instead of riflemen.

By the way, Old Harry shows as two turns from Steam Power; I could see him trying to bulb Railroad and stabilize on machine-guns. In this case, if I am not strong enough to attack his cities directly, I will resort to Plan B, which I have had in my mind for a long time:

3. Pillage every tile in his empire so he can't produce anything any more ever again.

That said, here are the fronts:

Northern front (main army):




I plan to advance over the hills toward Barnet, bypassing Forest Green if it remains strongly held so as to preserve the cohesion of my forces against the counterattack.

Southern front (secondary forces gathering):




I decided I want to focus my efforts here on the axis Kettering-Exeter, barring intervention on the part of Old Harry, with a projected D-Day of turn 177. I will take Lancaster and Halifax if he abandons them, however, obviously.

Northwestern front (naval):




This should be a low-intensity front; the plan is simply to load two infantry onto the galley finished in Fort Dawnguard this turn and run them up to his island covered by that ironclad I built last turn. D-Day should likewise be turn 177.

This front does raise the spectre of Azzan attack, which could either occur here (more likely) or in my southeast (near Serdoa) or even amphibiously, along my eastern seaboard (Azza is teching Astronomy now; reads as eight turns). Here, I obviously couldn't hold these cities, but they are six tiles from my nearest core city, Wild West, where I would hope to have assembled a freshly-drafted army by the time he got there. Likewise in the southeast. As for the eastern seaboard ...




It appears exceedingly vulnerable to galleons, though I must point out Legoland is actually one tile off the coast (though Aquanauts, Hydranauts, Cuzco, and Vitcos are not) ... and there are these choke-points. As I consider the potential of a sudden boating attempt to unseat the victor likely, should I prove so in the Harrian war, I believe my best course of action would be to dedicate Cuzco (bottom of image, finished its cannon build this turn) wholly to naval production (drydock, then ironclads) and aim to have those choke-points secured by the time Azza can launch galleons. At that point, I can also run boats into his waters (we have Open Borders, for now) to see if such an attempt is in the offing and if I need to draft infantry in my coastal cities (thankfully Aquanauts, Hydranauts, and Cuzco could each draft theirs in the same turn if threatened, ie. thankfully I don't have too many coastal cities!).

Anyway, enough about an Azzan threat that may or may not materialize! The whole rest of my empire is utterly devoted to the war on Old Harry, even neglecting important start-up infrastructure like courthouses - because this, friends, is the end: war without end until one of us bows careworn crown to the other in defeat.

Through smoke and fire and shot and shell,
And to the very walls of hell,
But we shall stand and we shall stay
Over the hills and far away

O'er the hills and o'er the main
Through Flanders, Portugal and Spain.
King George commands and we obey
Over the hills and far away.

[NobleHelium]

You never fixed your screenshot type by the way.

[TheHumanHydra]

I know. If I recall correctly it was because to do so I had to access the Terminal, which is like a command-line thingy on a Mac which I am very frightened of because it bypasses the interface to access the system itself, which I know nothing about and am afraid to screw up - probably irrationally, but hey. So I just didn't post very many screenshots while using that slow internet, but now I don't need to worry about it because I'm back to my normal connection! /long-winded explanation

Anyway, surprised you noticed; you really don't let anything escape your eye, do you, NobleHelium?

[NobleHelium]

Uh if the instructions told you to use the terminal it was probably just to locate the CivilizationIV.ini file for editing. You should be able to find the file normally via the Finder and then edit it. Maybe you need to use the terminal to change the file permissions so that you can edit it? I don't know. That's what you get for using a Mac and not knowing how it works, I'm sure novice would never read your thread because the images take forever to load.

[TheHumanHydra]

It wanted me to use the Terminal 'cause it's the system screenshots I'm using; I don't have the key on my keyboard for the in-game ones. I do mostly know how to use my Mac - at least as far as I know how to use any technology (as you can tell, I'm not very adept), but I am reluctant to delve into the Terminal precisely because I don't understand it. Are people actually having problems with image load-times? I thought your advice, NobleHelium, was just so it wouldn't take me as long to upload them on my previous poor connection. If there is an issue I will endeavour to fix it ... even if it means figuring out the Terminal.

THE TERMINAL duh-duh-dunh! Sounds like some dystopian cyborg-city overlord or something.

Novice, do you read my thread? You can say no; I won't be offended.

I know! If I capture a city from Old Harry and decide to keep it, I'll name it THE TERMINAL.

[TheHumanHydra]

Mechanics question: if I Artist-bomb a just-captured city, am I guaranteed to get first-ring borders there? If not, is there a less arcane way of figuring out whether I will than determining the hidden "cultural value" of each individual tile? Barring that, are there any practical examples of this in games on this site (or elsewhere, I guess ...) I could guesstimate off of? Mmm, maybe I could set up a sim ...

[NobleHelium]

It does take a very long time to load your screenshots. Europeans tend to have bandwidth-capped or metered connections. I don't, but I'm not paying attention to your thread much because the screenshots have been taking an increasingly longer amount of time to load. Nobody really cares how long it takes you to upload the screenshots, people care about how long it takes to download them.

Mac OS X is built on a BSD-like system which is a type of *nix. Its graphical interface does its best to hide what it really is. The commands are very similar to modern Linux systems.

Mechanics question: if I Artist-bomb a just-captured city, am I guaranteed to get first-ring borders there? If not, is there a less arcane way of figuring out whether I will than determining the hidden "cultural value" of each individual tile? Barring that, are there any practical examples of this in games on this site (or elsewhere, I guess ...) I could guesstimate off of? Mmm, maybe I could set up a sim ...

Your subsequent questions make it obvious that you've looked this up and thus you should know what the answer to the first question is.