Well that didn't work out very well. Hungry's a lost cause unfortunately. It's disheartening of course but with the capital on a hill, it's not actually the end of our game. We need to pull back to Sleepy and at that point our Cavs & Cuirs will be able to move to either city instantly. We held Sore which was more important.
That drunken captain stuff,...:LOL: well moving those cats would have saved the city,...at least for 1T. I wish that I could consider this the last of our bleeding except that GavagaiLand is MC's next logical target. Now that MC can hold that water ways choke we can't stop him from moving an enormous army over to our softer GavagaiLand. I would be surprised if MC keep pushing the attack on our mainland. It won't be good for us but we'll probably get some respite there.
Will you be asking for a pause? The clock looks like it'll flip the turn by 9:30 tomorrow and we won't be quite done at that point. Crap,...I just remembered that I'll be getting in late tomorrow,...maybe 11:00 or so.
We can only mitigate MC's higher production and higher promotions by fighting on the hills. We didn't have enough rifles and ones we did had no promos and no fortify,... a few turns from now our mainland will be able to win battles despite this setback. If MC keeps coming at us there we'll probably regain our footing after we get out those rifles in queue and draft a bunch more.
Who knows,... our real problem is that his G2 Rifles are virtually collateral proof against cats. Every turn I regret not going for cannons more and more.
So yeah,...a pause would be good. Probably we'll stabilize but we're just so far behind in getting factories.
Yeah, sorry I wasn't around to chat today. My afternoon got sucked up being out of the house. And still won't have much time today to actually look at things in great detail. So yeah, I'm going to head over to the main thread to state that I'll pause it in a little while when I at least have time for a quick login. Any discussion we have tomorrow at least should be quick, since I think if we decide we are retreating everything from Hungry, then the only other major thing to figure out is which cities to draft and how many more upgrades to do.
So 90% of me says that we're out of this game and it's time to conceed. The loss of Hungry is not even part of that,...it's pretty much irrelevant to the conclusion.
The major reasons why we're in serious trouble is:
1. MC's bottled up that waterway near Sore. That means that we can't spread out his units or threaten a soft underbelly.
2. MC can move a huge cannon army towards Tacape. We'll have a very tough time defending that location but at least it's a choke.
3. MC can bypass Tacape and threaten our northern GavagaiLand waters. Nothing that we can do about that.
4. Our strategy of breaking the northern waterways choke has probably failed since MC's only a few turns away from Steam Power and we haven't landed Astronomy yet since we had to burn so much gold saving Sore and unsuccessfully trying to save Hungry.
Still, there's that other 10% of me. :LOL:
1. With the extra galleons from Ruff (?) can we break the north waters choke now? If that happens and we can stream 30 Cavs/Cuirs we can take Battle Island and turn the game into a fighting chance again. We won't be able to hold the waterways for any real amount of time. But if it's long enough to sweep the island and expose a vulnerable front with that canal near Cairo we might put MC on the defensive.
2. Let's figure out our break-even to Assembly Line. Once MC gets Steam Power he need Corporation and then onto Assembly Line. Based on his tech time to Steam Power (7t) he's probably 14T out from getting both.
We need to finish Astronomy + Chemistry + Steel + Education + economics + Corporation + Assembly Line. Yeah, that doesn't look good. And even MC's draft Infantry will come out the gate with Pinch. I think that I just crushed the life out of my 10%. :LOL:
In the meantime we have to modify our defense strategy around the capital. With no hills + invalid G2 promotions we'll better defend the capital with cats + Cavs. Sore, with hills all around it, will need to focus it's defenses around fortified Rifles. We have to be ready to hit MC's stack before it gets to the hill next to Sleepy. So I would add cats and cavs to the build queue and keep relying on drafts for Sore.
We can forget about naval builds,...or at least for the purpose of trying to hold control of any waterways. With Chemistry's frigates we might be able to dart around MC's ironclads and our naval strategy will have to be based on that.
We will get to Steel far before MC gets to Assembly Line. So we'll be making cannons non-stop while MC's making factories. Who knows? Pinch cavalry actually do ok against Infantry. C1+Pinch Cav vs C1(+pinch) Infantry 34.5/19.7/45.8%. Add canons to that and we'll probably be ok in a battle there.
I've been debating whether a strong Donovan is in our interest. Donovan could try to kill us at Kerk,..that would be a logical thing to do if he's secure elsewhere. Still, watching Donovan rise into contention might distract MC somewhat.
Just a real quick update from the finishing of the turn. We decided that Hungry was absolutely a lost cause. The units I had left were basically destroyed and would be trampled by Commodore next turn, so I vacated the city and moved them all to Sleepy. So he'll be able to just waltz in and take the city, but at least his units won't gain any more experience. I'd have been lucky to kill off one or two of them if we left the units in there to defend.
Elsewhere I just drafted a few more Rifles (one out of Popeyes to send to the Donovan border just to try to deter him from attacking me) and moving ships in the SE waters to get ready for some more transfer of Cuirs over to the mainland from Tacape. Also put a turn of 100% research into Astronomy. Next turn we'll be able to run break-even to finish off the tech. Not sure what it'll do for us, but at least we'll finally get that stupid tech. LOL
We are about ready to announce here that we can concede when others are ready. But I have a strong feeling that Donovan won't be ready to concede the game yet. After he's done rolling over Ruff, I fully believe he'll want to try to take GavLand & BorscheLand from me. I wish he'd be willing to help hit Commodore, but he may be satisfied to knock be down and then concede to Commodore after that. Because no matter what, if he doesn't hit Commodore after conquering Ruff then the only result of this game is that he eventually concede to Comm. A gang-up on Comm has been the only way we'd ever get the game to a point where he doesn't win, and no one has been willing to do that this entire time.
(October 19th, 2015, 11:32)HitAnyKey Wrote: Just a real quick update from the finishing of the turn. We decided that Hungry was absolutely a lost cause. The units I had left were basically destroyed and would be trampled by Commodore next turn, so I vacated the city and moved them all to Sleepy. So he'll be able to just waltz in and take the city, but at least his units won't gain any more experience. I'd have been lucky to kill off one or two of them if we left the units in there to defend.
Elsewhere I just drafted a few more Rifles (one out of Popeyes to send to the Donovan border just to try to deter him from attacking me) and moving ships in the SE waters to get ready for some more transfer of Cuirs over to the mainland from Tacape. Also put a turn of 100% research into Astronomy. Next turn we'll be able to run break-even to finish off the tech. Not sure what it'll do for us, but at least we'll finally get that stupid tech. LOL
We are about ready to announce here that we can concede when others are ready. But I have a strong feeling that Donovan won't be ready to concede the game yet. After he's done rolling over Ruff, I fully believe he'll want to try to take GavLand & BorscheLand from me. I wish he'd be willing to help hit Commodore, but he may be satisfied to knock be down and then concede to Commodore after that. Because no matter what, if he doesn't hit Commodore after conquering Ruff then the only result of this game is that he eventually concede to Comm. A gang-up on Comm has been the only way we'd ever get the game to a point where he doesn't win, and no one has been willing to do that this entire time.
HAK, I think that we need to either concede or not concede. Almost ready to concede is confusing. NOT CONCEDING - we prefer a permanent state of denial for at least the next 6 months. :LOL: We're not letting a little thing like 50T of break-even to Assembly Line deter us.
Also, does Donovan even have half of our city count? Or rifles? He's going to take a lot more turns to finish off Ruff, then he's going to need to get those cities productive and work off the draft/whip unhappy. At that point his optimal move is probably to tech and build while MC and us knock each other out. So it's going to be a long-time before he tries the kinds of things that you're worried about,...unless he starts drinking Ruff's cool-aid.
Here are the details for this turn.
First the Demos:
Then we have the core region:
The waters are marked with what he has where. Anything unlabled is a single ship of that type. He moved 2 units onto the Sheep up there, so I expect those to load onto one of the galleys. The we watch to see if that galley goes to the island to attack Ruff or sails down to my core.
Over at Sore he hit me with 3 cannons this turn (losing one) and that's it. So I think he's just trying to keep me wounded while he brings in more Rifles.
All while he waits to see if he can kick off a Golden Age next turn.....eek!
If he gets this Great Scientist, he'll be able to kick off the 4-person golden age since he already has an Artist, Merchant, & Engineer. Turn after he gets Steam Power he'll likely upgrade his MANY new Triremes to Iron Clads.
Anyway, the only decision I need to make for this turn is whether I load another 6 Cuirassiers onto Galleys to then load onto Galleons for transport. If I don't hear from Mindy this morning for discussion, I'll just do that and end the turn since there isn't really much else to discuss for this turn. Since there aren't really any other changes I can do towards any other plans.
Over in RuffLand, Donovan will be taking West Bank this turn (Ruff evacuated it to send those LBs into Macedon to defend it) and they are in the middle of the battle for Epirus. Donovan might be able to take it this turn if he's lucky, but looks like Ruff wounded his stack by using his own stack of Catapults this turn. If he has a stack of Cuirs inside his own borders that can march in to hit the city from the west, then that also gives him a strong chance to take it.
That's about it for now. Not sure what else I can do at this point. My guess is that Comm will heal up his stack that was attacking Hungry and keep stacking up units at Sore, while waiting for his Iron Clads to come into play. Not that he really needs them, since he's had control of the waters pretty much this whole time because Ruff kept his Galleons sitting idle forever.
When some of those Rifles finish we'll need to get on those Cavalry builds:
I realized that I didn't draw any conclusions and that it might not be obvious:
1. Once you take hill + fort into consideration CG1 rilfes are not drastically better than draft rifles. Flatland the promotion matters.
2. Because MC has easy access to the Pinch promotion but not to the formation promotion, on the defense, a cavalry has almost the same odds as a hilled + full fortify rifle. Pinch = hills + Cav's avoid FS + higher base strength. Take away the hill and the Cav is strangely ahead.
3. If we need to attack out to protect Happy,...Cavs are far ahead. A C2 Rifle from MC would defend better. A C1 Rifle would attack better. But overall they won't come that close.
Because mobility is king and drafting a S8 city is cheaper than putting 110H into a Rifle,...rifles aren't really worth building. Might change if MC starts building his own cavs.
Producing CG2 rifles is definately worth it since the bonus is very high. Last consideration is that Infantry get a large bonus against Rifles so they're going to lose their effectiveness sooner.
I've started the turn. Asked Gavagai if I could log in before him and he's ok with it. We may even swap spots in the turn order such that I play after Comm and before him. That worked best before anyway.
Demos:
Comm ended up getting another Great Merchant this turn, so he couldn't kick off his Golden Age. Though he will be able to send it to do a mission to get himself obsene amounts of gold for research and upgrades.
More to come after looking at stuff in game and during our chat if you are around right now.
(October 21st, 2015, 14:25)MindyMcCready Wrote: Just looking at those pics,...
If we make a galleon from Happy we can move in-and-out of the island and still be in our culture. MC's got a lot of tiles to cover to prevent that.
How many units does MC have on Battle Island now?
This is going to be a no-go. He's sending all the stuff that was at Hungry along his roads to go after Sore. So we can't go on the offensive to the island while we have to fight back his now concentrating most everything on the steps of Sore.
