[Spoilers] Haram hopefully reports

[Commodore]

[scooter]

Final war staging as promised. First, here's my soldier count.



Rival best is probably Mackoti, but possibly TBS as well. My lead over them is pretty significant, although in fairness this is with neither of them drafting and before I've taken any losses. The lovely power spike:



BETTER BE SCURRED.


Ok, war things. Let's go south-to-north again.



Most of these will drop on the banana tile highlighted. Some will stay on the boats, but I haven't quite decided yet how many. It's really going to depend on what Dreylin does with his Knights and eastern cats. I'll make my decision based on his troop movements. If he gives me an inch, I'll take a foot.

I moved the staging tile here to be out of visibility from his worker. He's seen a couple of my Galleons already, but I'd like him to at least not know exactly how much is coming from sea. I did move my Frigates up after taking this picture because I don't care if he seems them. Side note: one of the reasons I don't mind going a little light on siege is that I can bombard by sea just fine.



The reason I don't need to drop them all off is because this group will also be joining the banana tile. There's also 4 Knights that aren't on this stack that will reach the banana tile. Part of the flexibility I have to not drop everything next to Waffle from my northern boats comes from the group of 7 Knights that will be on the banana tile as they can effectively fork the two front cities to ensure they both fall on T165.




This is the group I plan to drop next to Waffle Iron. I think he whipped this city, so I expect another Musket to show up in here, but other than that it's still pretty lightly defended.

Currently his Knight stack is not in range of either of these two front tiles, so if he neglects to move them again next turn, he won't be able to even consider attacking me. If he does - honestly I'd still rather get his Knights out in the open and kill them now so I can recklessly blitz forward, so I'd welcome that. I may shuffle Knights around a little as collateral soakers, though.

ninja-edit: I just noticed in the preview-post pane that this is the Confucian holy city. Shows how much I still never caught up on. Haram, did he build a shrine here by any chance?



And there's this spot. If you look closely, you can see his Knight stack right under Tsargon's score in the bottom-right of the screen. This spot IS in range of his 2 catapults (could be as many as 4 if he whipped cats in both of these cities), which might just prove attractive enough for him to attack. He did suicide 3 Caravels into a privateer a few turns back after all. If he doesn't take the bait, I may bombard the city down a little between the treb and Frigates. If he does manage to scrounge up a few more cats via whipping, he might actually be able to kill the stack, but again the cost would be horrific.

The general plan here is that once Waffle Iron falls, I can scurry a bunch of Knights onto this hill tile. If he hasn't reinforced heavily, I can suicide a few Knights to damage the top defenders, and then I should be able to capture it pretty breezily with Rifles. If he decides to make a stand here, I'll wait an extra turn for a couple more units.

There's always the chance he sees the hill a target and places a unit on top of it, at which point I'll just abandon this plan. I kinda doubt it though - this past turn after seeing that I'm clearly coming after him, he whipped just 3 times (Tsargon whipped 4 this turn from 5 cities), and he played the turn pretty quickly again. He also didn't move any units at all. I'm skeptical that he's got a master defense plan.


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That's the gist of the military plans. I did make one other snap decision that I may or may not regret.



I saw Mackoti chose Drama after finishing Steel. That doesn't make any sense unless he's targeting Military Tradition, which would make sense given that he's about to become neighbors with TBS. After giving it some thought, I decided I'd rather get Military Tradition myself so that I can build West Point (which I'd like to avoid letting him have), so I'm going to go ahead and race him there, especially since I've got a 1T head start. My Heroic Epic city is fully ridiculous, so it would fit nicely in there. I should be able to stack some overflow too because in the GA it's producing so many hammers that some of them are lost.


Any burning questions? Or popcorn refills needed?

[El Grillo]

Thanks for the detailed reporting and for using signs to show city defenders. It's a lot easier for me to read than multiple overlaid screenshots/boxes. Looking forward to seeing how you execute this invasion, this is one part of the game where I'm almost completely clueless :D

Also, when you say you'd like to avoid mackoti having West Point, is it no longer a National Wonder in this mod (in spite of the civpedia tooltip)? Or is there some other first-to bonus at Military Tradition now?

[scooter]

Thanks for the detailed reporting and for using signs to show city defenders. It's a lot easier for me to read than multiple overlaid screenshots/boxes. Looking forward to seeing how you execute this invasion, this is one part of the game where I'm almost completely clueless :D

Glad it helps! The signs help me too so I can keep track of where his units were last time I saw them (and/or what units are freshly built) so I can figure his intentions out.

Also, when you say you'd like to avoid mackoti having West Point, is it no longer a National Wonder in this mod (in spite of the civpedia tooltip)? Or is there some other first-to bonus at Military Tradition now?

Nope, I'm just an idiot who hasn't played civ in 18 months and forgot the difference between West Point and the Pentagon.

[El Grillo]

In response to your new question about the presence of a shrine, there are two ways I know of to check. You can either use the Wonders tab of the Demos/Stats/Graphs screen (shrines count as World Wonders), or zoom in on the city and pick out the building graphic.

[scooter]

In response to your new question about the presence of a shrine, there are two ways I know of to check. You can either use the Wonders tab of the Demos/Stats/Graphs screen (shrines count as World Wonders), or zoom in on the city and pick out the building graphic.

Yeah, I do know how to check in-game, I just figured if Haram was around before I was able to log in to check I could get a quick answer. Anyway, Confucianism doesn't often get a shrine, so I'm guessing there's not.

Anything in particular (other than the obvious unit landings) you'd like to see for this upcoming turn?

[Commodore]

Anything in particular (other than the obvious unit landings) you'd like to see for this upcoming turn?

Actually yes, could you show a big flying-camera zoomed out picture of the world? Would be interesting to grasp who is getting what in the new configuration(s).

[scooter]

TBS played a 2+ hour turn (in which he captured another Tsargon city after Mackoti took 2 more earlier in the turn), and then he rolled the turn. I happened to be home, so I jumped in to take a couple screenshots for my own benefit (needed to sanity check a plan of mine) and then get out. Mentioning this here in case Dreylin wonders why I logged in before him for a very short period - I didn't touch any units, so I'm still waiting until after he plays to declare and then actually play the turn to follow the same order as the previous turn.

Anyway, I got your request in time, so I took a couple. I play in lower-res windowed mode for ease of screenshots (and so I can jot notes while playing), so these aren't perfect. Also I suck at flying camera mode. Unfortunately, I don't know a way to hide the signs, so I apologize for that. I didn't label myself or Dreylin because I think the signs adequately give those away.





Stray comments

*Tsargon is down to 3 cities.
*TBS has by far the best geographic position. He can snipe Tsargon's capital (most likely), he can walk over Borsche (who I think is literally just logging in and pressing enter), he can invade Jowy, etc. Wetbandit is an option too. He just has really easy access to land if he ever wants more.
*Mackoti also has easy access to Borsche, and I suspect that'll be his next target
*My best hope right now is that Mackoti and TBS can't come to an equitable split of Tsargon's land, and emotions get involved resulting in some poor decisions.
*Dreylin's southern island potentially makes TBS quite vulnerable to a boating from me. My border with him especially is about to be massive.
*Wetbandit is the wildcard. I can't tell if he's checked out of this game or not. He can't win, but he can impact who can.

[scooter]

It's time. Dreylin declared on me first and offered peace, but I'd rather not. He attacked a Caravel (I'm really not sure where) and killed it after losing the first fight. Anyway, the main event all in one complex screenshot.



Thoughts in no particular order.

1) He whipped Rice Cooker for 1 pop but otherwise did not reinforce it.

2) He piled everything possible into Waffle Iron. Not completely crazy because shrine culture means it has 60% defenses. Fortunately for me, I'm forting the tile 1W of my southwest stack, which means I'll have 7 Frigates available to drop defenses next turn. There's a bunch sitting in that red box. At 8% each, that'll bring defenses down to 4%. It'll make a huge difference which I'll demonstrate down below.

3) Side effect of piling into Waffle Iron is that Coffee Maker's defenses got emptied out. He did whip it for 1 pop and is bring a Musket/lbow in, but he can't reinforce it from Waffle Iron without killing my hilled Rifles.

4) He elected to move his Knight stack up. I think he plans to make a stand here, although that may change after he gets a look at the numbers. With just 2 catapults (3-4 if he's completing them in Rice/Waffle), I think his only shot to really kill anything is to take aim at the hill. He may retreat the Knights, but he can't really evacuate the units in the cities themselves.

5) The red box is important. On that tile is two Nav1 Galleons with 3 Rifles apiece on them. From that tile using the fort, they are able to either drop reinforcements on the hill next to Coffee OR boat Kettle. I like having options.

6) I briefly considering using my commando to wipe out those 8 workers. I stared at the screen for awhile and tried to figure out how they could hurt me if allowed to live. Couldn't come up with anything significant other than maybe a defensive fort, so I decided to save my Commando.

7) I decided to promote some of the hill Rifles - 2 to Guerilla2, 1 to C2, and the other 2 (2xp) unpromoted. Decent chance he goes for it, but I figured some degree of healing promos would be nice. I don't really know what the ideal choice was so I split the difference. I do want him to attack it, but I also would like him to not succeed, so striking a balance is a crapshoot. I do regret swapping that Rifle out for a Treb.


OKAY. I think that covers it. I did take a look at odds (I never bothered simming or anything - gonna YOLO this war), and the difference between cultural defenses being present is stark.





It's not a perfect comparison because of promos I believe, but still - good thing we've got those Frigates. I whacked a couple of his boats. I could have had a couple more, but I'd rather get the city defenses down and be in place to do it for Waffle next turn.



So far so good.

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In foreign news, TBS fired a golden age. I was eager to compare.



Nice to see the MFG edge narrowly remains now that we're on even footing, but this underscores how badly more land is needed as much of TBS's land isn't fully online yet. Obligatory power graph.



Next turn should be the fun one. Hopefully everybody doesn't get a case of the Saturdays, and I'm able to play tomorrow night.

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So here are my odds for next turn for total number of cities captured. Place your bets.

0: 1%
1: 29%
2: 55%
3: 12%
4: 3%

Sound about right? Any questions?

[Haram]

What are your plans regarding civics?