REM goes on the Sudric Express [Pitboss 33 spoilers]

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Pics when I have a chance, lots of stuff to think about.

Summary...

Yaks taken for the loss of 2 inf (killed 5 inf, 1 airship)
1 frigate killed outside yaks
Yaks garrisoned to a small extent, but the farm/road to its west razed, preventing counter. He has no workers in range to remake this.
Galleon in Yaks with 2 inf.
Dogs razed for the loss of 1 rifle (1 rifle killed, the killing rifle at 1.1 health deleted after) The galleon outside I kept with 1 cavalry in. If it gets killed it gets killed.
Very cheeky offer of peace for 260 gpt. If he takes it I have a cracking eco advantage. If he doesn't he gets pummeled by 2 people...

[Mardoc]

Looking forward to hearing the details. Those sound like really strong plays.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Looking forward to hearing the details. Those sound like really strong plays.

Thanks. I think the Drey4E made some serious misplays here for the first time. IMO Trying to perhaps play too clever rather than simple and safe.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

I apologise, but I only have after pictures. I'm sure Drey4E can show you what their defensive set up was though.

So lets wind this back to when I first logged in. I was at first dismayed. I was expecting 3 inf a few rifles and a few cav in Yaks - instead there were 6 infantry! Only 1 with damage at 16 health, the rest with no promos except 1 CG1 one. Not insurmountable but much more than I was expecting. But then again despite him having a cavalry build finish in Dogs, there was still only one rifle in that city and actually those infantry had minimal amounts of fortify bonus, so really the best possible moment to hit.

I also took the OBs that BGN offered.

So I had a lot of thinking time - most important this early on in a war.

I first looked out East, over the old DZ land.

This was the first odd thing he did IMO. He spent a lot of airship moves bombing down my small ship stack above Percy and moderate stack that was mainly to deter aggression on DZs last city. This makes no sense to me. These clearly don't pose any real risk to him. I can never hope to take cities out here with all that cavalry floating about. And I only have the one galleon on show - if he has more than a token defence then I am not going to get anywhere navally. He even more bizzarely bombed units sat in Glitch mode - they will recover all their health in the interturn, and I clearly don't have enough to do anything to the machine gun/3rifles/assorted cavalry in honeybees. IMO he would have been better redistributing these around his empire. Scooter must be hiding his planned attack very well, and he must not think I am too able to do much damage to his Gaspar conquests... But it just seemed a waste to me.

So I basically withdrew back to my culture to save GPT, and also to try and give him a chance for the Scooter invasion. It is not in my interests for Scooter to make short work of him.

In the middle I continued most of my builds, trying to get a unit 1 turned in almost every city. Happy to switch between builds to get something each turn. Things are looking strong.

And actually I took the interturn shots! Here they are. So the West;

So attacking unit wise it was 7 inf and 2 rifles outside yaks of differing amounts of mild damage from his cat strikes playing 6 inf. Perhaps he felt confident in his defences hence not moving the cavs in? Or perhaps he planned to make a counter attack to waste my stack there and then. I felt I had to take it this turn as the border pop would give him extra defence, and an extra frigate to cause problems built EoT.

I was really unsure why he left Dogs with 1 rifle in too. He could have at least put cavalry back in it... Maybe he wanted to lure me into going for it because he didn't want to lose Yaks? Or perhaps he just forgot. I can't think of any other sensible explanation for leaving Dogs uncovered.

So I first used my 5 airships in range of Yaks, and got moderate damage on all of the inf inside. Then had a brain faff and used 2 inf promoted to C1/Pinch at 40ish percent odds and lost both of these. Realised that I needed naval support and took his Frigate NW of the city at 65% odds. Then my second frigate gave me a bombard. After that my pinch inf were getting 65% odds, and I won every subsequent battle. My one inf with 2 xp and a rifle cleaned up the damaged 2 inf, and the city was captured!

I then had thinking to do - should I attempt to weather the counter of his 2 inf and 5 cav in range or prevent them attacking? I had at my disposal a machine gun, a rifle, the winning inf and 2 galleons (2inf/cav and 2rifle/cav) I could not see any workers in range to build a road back on the tile. I also had 2 galleons full of units in range of a 1 rifle defended city. What should I send?

When I got back in first thing I wanted to do was raze dogs. I had the one airship in range from the Pind city which bombed the rifle down about 15% health. I then pondered some more. Inf had 50% odds pre upgrades. My rifles were weak and had no upgrades available. Given that the ship would be vulernable to counter from being airshiped then hit by the northern galleon I could see I felt I should use the weaker units. I thought about dropping a rifle or cav off, but the only place I could would have been his owned island or after the attack. Plus I wanted redundancy in case of bad results. Attacked with the 2 rifles, and won the second. I deleted the rifle after as it only had 1.1 health and I want to avoid giving him free xp (GGs accumulate super fast here! I only needed 24 odd xp for my first!) I kept the cav on the galleon as I felt he was more likely to survive on there.

Given my risk adverse nature feeling I am in quite a strong position here I decided to go the defensive route and raze the farm and road. So I dropped the cav in the city, and razed the farm, and used the spare rifle to raze the road. I put the cav back in the city. Because I could make him pay for killing the rifle should he try, I left him alive (also he was full health) I left my inf in the galleon which is in range of Silkmoths which could make him pay if he leaves just a rifle in there again.

So this is the final layout of troops

I have a lot moving in, and moved my airships from the East over to here where they will be more useful. He is rather sparsely defended still.

Post combat demos pre turn roll

Pretty good. Still miles ahead MFG out of GA and making lots of GNP without wealth builds. I then had a long think and decided to offer Drey4E an out for 260 gpt for peace. (they were making 264 EoT I believe, and about 300 at turn roll)

This is definitely a longshot, and I really don't expect him to take it but more to show that I am happy to consider peace. The last thing I want is Scooter taking all his cities and then going on to victory. Getting a crippling gpt peace deal is the best possible outcome for me, and would allow the Drey4E to live on to fight Scooter. I would then be able to tech incessantly as this is more than my loss per turn at full tech! I would reach key tech many turns before others and then with the MFG be very hard to beat. Any further progress now will be slow, especially after silkmoths.

I expect after the Scooter invasion him to come back with a counter proposal. I would definitely take anything over 200, and probably anything over 150 really. You know the drill with haggling, ask for more than you want and much more likely to get more. I also want this as my BGN peace runs out next turn roll, and with all those ironclads he could make himself very irksome indeed. Plus Pind has a large Navy, and it is all rather tight here. Would definitely make me safer, means he can defend well vs Scooter and stops either of them getting an edge IMO. Might also make them realise Scooter is coming shortly. The first person to get peace has a much better negotiating hand really.

I definitely set this too high though, only when typing this now I realise that they are in GA. This will probably drop about 50-100 out of GA. They just aren't making enough gold to make that a feasible outcome. Realistically I don't think they can spare the gold... Though they did spend 184 on rifle upgrades last turn to try and hold me.

Turn roll demos. He whipped out a lot of stuff! I gained 200k soliders, he 300! But then he whipping has recently been frenzied...

So plan - next turn if still at war, see if can raze silkmoths. Regroup in Yaks. Use 4 workers to move those units once healed the non cultured tiles to the hill SE of Silkmoths, and raze the roads as I go with cav. After that I need to leave a much bigger rearguard, and thus peace for GPT becomes more attractive again.

This is where I get annoyed at the game rules a little. I think here Drey4E selling me his island city for peace would be very appropriate. But we can't... That definitely sucks. Silkmoths even more so as gifting cities removes all the foreign culture there.

So all pretty good! I was lucky with combat rolls, getting all the 60-70% chances to land. Oh and final thought I got a gg in Percy, and am about 10 xp from another.

[Aurorarcher]

Thanks for the report and pics!

That went rather well for you, and your attackers hardly even got injuried!

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Thanks for the report and pics!

That went rather well for you, and your attackers hardly even got injuried!

Yeah really well really. I expected to take the city, but not that easily. I expected to need the inf on the one galleon at least, hence taking yaks pre dogs. I can probably muster about 15 full health inf and 10 cavs in about 3 turns, with a cat/treb and airship support. Plus the machine gun gives token AA there.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

But this is slow. I don't have the naval power needed to move things around quickly here. I do have a galleon to the south with 3 inf, the one inside yaks and the one that razed dogs but none others remotely close. I only got steel for drydocks this turn too so nav1 galleons were not possible until now.

[Abegweit]

Long time lurker (from back in Civ III days!). First time poster. I just want to thank all three contenders (you know who you are) for the effort they have taken show their thinking and to make this a superb game to watch! Thank you all so much (I'm making this same post in all three threads).

Can't wait to see the finale

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Long time lurker (from back in Civ III days!). First time poster. I just want to thank all three contenders (you know who are are) for the effort they have taken show their thinking and to make this a superb game to watch! Thank you all so much (I'm making this same post in all three threads).

Can't wait to see the finale

I feel honoured that we have made you post! I tried to explain my thought processes more than usual as I know people are following this very intently. Like this is back in the glory days level of following.

If I keep BGN/pind honest, and scooter does go for Drey4E I think my chances are best of the three here whether I get a gpt cash sum for peace or continue warring. Pind is just clicking the button IMO, but BGN is much more unpredictable.

I don't think that either of the other 2 will try to get the cristo redentor either giving me super spi hopefully too. Finally in a razing game I can replenish the razes faster to a workable state (settle/factory/shale)

[Abegweit]

Well, I'm not going to say anything about the other two since I am obviously spoiled. So I'll just say that your latest post about the game was a joy to read. Thank you.