REM goes on the Sudric Express [Pitboss 33 spoilers]

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Still, tanks now including triple promo ones from the cap!

Haha. Burning from the happy fallout though of ivory being obsolete. My own fault for letting him retake his city and massacring my units in there... Stupid stupid move.

Why can't my citizens condone the ivory trade for a few more years?

[Mardoc]

Why can't my citizens condone the ivory trade for a few more years?

I'm sure the real problem is that your elephant hunters have chosen to upgrade to tanks, and that's not leaving many usable tusks...

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Why can't my citizens condone the ivory trade for a few more years?

I'm sure the real problem is that your elephant hunters have chosen to upgrade to tanks, and that's not leaving many usable tusks...

It would make tackling poachers a lot harder.

Scooter reached physics this turn btw, 2 turning it quite nicely. However he is still electricity and industrialism behind plus a small amount of beakers towards flight. Not quite sure of gold stocks but I still have 1k too.

Roughly about 8k beakers ahead currently. Tech path now might be the time to pick up biology. Some of the island cities of Pind have quite a few farms knocking around. If not it will be the flight-radio route. Other interesting tech is refrigeration with the free ship movement point.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

State of play now - Its looking good. Despite being at war with 3 powers, they aren't exactly cooperating well. Pind now has no navy, suiciding it against my transports (as hoped) which has basically freed up all of my escourting destroyers to cause a headache for Scooter. Also I have managed to see that he has virtually no defenders in his core. This is making me rather keen to take just 1 covered transport into his land, where there are several tiles from which I can reach 5 or 6 cities. Currently these have no units in each. I doubt I will be able to raze anything, and might even just send in the transport without any units in - but he will still have to cover all the cities which is the main thing.

I do have quite a few around BGN also, but he has been very cautious with his ironclads so I need to keep some around here just in case. He seems to have basically been morale support in this war. Only aggressive thing he has done is raze some fishing boats currently. No troop movements on me yet. Pind is just defending.

So I am getting to plow most of my army against Pind and Navy v Scooter, meaning I am kinda pressing all 3 people!

Happy is hugely hurting currently. Gonna have to run 10% slider this turn. Only costs me about 10-15 sci, but gains a lot of prod. next turn when I settle for gems and with MR EoT I should be back to not needing the slider, and only probably my biggest cities of Gordon/Percy having an unhappy face, which is manageable.

Pind has left a city in range of my 6 transports with only 2 inf and a cannon in. Should be ripe to raze. Difficult to make much headway with the amount of cannon he has though. Plus Scooter is Garrisoning his cities for him somewhat.

Gonna have a round of tank builds, with a few battleships thrown in from those cities with drydocks and no barracks. In 4 turns I should be able to commit about 8-10 tanks to Pind attack, with all the other stuff too. Shouldn't be too long before he is finished. Need to push a load of cities at once to spread his troops thinly. I am tempted to try and get him to counter me somewhere, but last time that ended... Badly. I do have a forest hill stationed in his territory that is a nice staging post for me too.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

So city burnt, Pind only has 3 left. Spent a long time pondering about things and really struggle to see a decent way through to any of his cities. Especially if Scooter is covering them. Also my cavalry is limited against the cossacks. So had a think and new plan - go screw with Scooter. See if I can beat him into wanting peace before the Drey4E treaty expires. That is the goal here really. Get peace before he can jump in. Cavalry will be far more useful against his infantry, and I have the advantage owning his second ring culture tiles in the old Gaspar area. Hopefully he won't be suspecting this, and the area is quite devoid of his culture that these cities could be useful. Always gotta be careful of Drey4E coming back at me though. Maybe just burning everything is the way forward.

I also had a think and I have to abandon Glitch mode. It is culture swamped, and I don't want to loose soliders to a simple cannon/inf strike. I fully expect him to declare next turn. I'll let him have GM for peace, that doesn't bother me too much.

GW struck again, hit a rather useful tile in a moderately starved city... Bah.

At the turn roll, with the MR build and taking the gems with a city found this turn, I will only have 1 unhappy face without needing the culture slider. Success. I will be vulernable to loosing happy sources - a lot of my only copies are on the fringes of my empire. Not much to do about that except hope I am not attacked there!

Movements wise, I will see what Scooter is keeping in Aspirin and see if I can raze that, and also started burning the roads to the Pind cities. Going after Scooter now I want to try to not be open to a counter.

I had hoped that Drey4E might have tried to snipe a Pind city but no luck. It seems I am against the whole world for definite now. Let the games begin! 4 tanks completed EoT as nothing can upgrade to them sadly. Should be able to push another 6-8 out EoT again. I don't have to commit to going for Scooter or Pind the turn after this one, so I will get a good idea of what is what then.

Graphs are quite interesting. BGN is now at higher power than Scooter... Drey4E are coming back strong with huge amounts of wealth builds and just have got into caste so are stopping the slaving. It will be easier to assess their MFG output now at least.

Can I do this? I think if I haven't got any peace treaties in 3 turns, I'm gonna have to bunker down for an expected dogpile. I can't take the fight to everyone at the same time. My tech edge should keep me safe on the defensive, it's just Drey4E have a huge amount of cavalry still...

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

This was another reason for switching to hitting Scooter - it keeps my army around to protect from Drey4E too. I feel safe on the water as he is still a fair way off combustion.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Ergh. So many destroyers. I'm not sure if I can safely escort a transport or 2 through the fire of now airships and the amount of ships there. The other faff is that he of course has the lovely canal through his city to be able to hit Yaks and beyond fast through which I can do very little about, and so need to keep some ships in reserve. Also whilst battleships are awesome on attack with the barrage ability, they are only so so in defence and cannot intercept like destroyers.

I'm struggling to see where I can get a breakthrough now.
Pind is holing up and not countering, he seems content to sit there all 'come at me bro!'
BGN I think is teching and waiting to push as I am not pressing him yet
Scooter can probably cover most things I throw at him currently unless I commit everything.
Drey4E are 1 turning railroad and well on their way to destroyers too...

I can set up another burn of a Pind city next turn, but it might just give Drey4E more land. I have sorted my happy issues though at least for the time being. And it seems that DZ doesn't want his cities back, he can't actually hit me next turn.

But I can't see a clear route here now... If only there were a nuclear option! Bombers would give me the lacking ability to reduce non coastal defences, although these are both flight and radio away.

Need to have a rethink when I am more awake.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Right. Next 2 turns are pretty much make or break. Everyone else seems to be on a GNP build frenzy that I cannot currently partake in due to the global nature of my warring. However, apart from amassing a navy the main rival of Scooter still seems to be holding off on troop builds. As said before, switching to Scooter will be too complicated at this point now I feel.

Also. Screw you sid and your environmentalism! third turn in a row that I have had a GW strike. At least this didn't kill an improvement, but a nice grassland is now unusable outside canaries. At least if hills are hit they only loose a hammer/food. I wonder if we will reach fishing village territory in the game. I guess not as even if it goes to space, I doubt that will take more than 60ish turns.

Firstly, with 1 colosseum build, and my new city on the conquered Pind island for gems, we no longer have any happiness issues! Every city is happy, and I believe every city is healthy also.

Pre and post roll demos. Nice to see my solider jump, mainly from a round of tank and battleship builds. A smattering of other stuff. The GNP concerns me. I do know that both Drey4E and BGN are golden, but essentially I am now withering a bit. It isn't like I am running slider or anything, so I believe it to be a combination of no TRs and no GNP builds. I assume the top GNP is the 1 turn of railroad from a hard teching Drey4E (who I have a lot of visibility on still) so at least it isn't Scooter coming back hard. I am pleased to see my soliders jump by 15 odd % too, which is good news for my offence.

Irritatingly, I have lost all visibility on Scooters cities now. It was fun whilst it lasted, but alas wasn't to be forever. Very little combat this turn save the usual airship raids. I lost a 95% to loose a destroyer which was annoying, and killed a Scooter scouting rifle loosing a cav probing him through DZ territory.

To the world. Mainly actually the big unknown. BGN.

I am not sure what to make of him this game. I think he is hurting not settling on rivers and loosing the powerful levees, and his land seems rather underdeveloped compared to everyone else (even others that fell behind like Pind) but he is still trucking along. He has a decent sized army now especially on that island we share, yet he is just... Sitting there. Is he trying to sit it out? Like just peacefully build and kingmake later? He refused my peace offer, but I only sent one. Maybe I should send another this turn. If he mobilized and tried to attack I could never press Pind like I am planning too. This is the most confusing thing of the game. If he wanted an easy turn end deal then he would have taken the peace. And he is playing his turns using a fair amount of time. So I really don't know what he is thinking. It is irritating constantly having to check to see if he is making a move though, and I could easily forget and get destroyed if I am not careful. This was part of the want to attack Pind. I wanted cities that I could feel safe leaving unguarded to focus armies elsewhere.

So what is the plan, stan? Well plan now, it changes every turn. Take Pinds capital. In 2 turns. It will be bloody. It will be messy. But I think I can do it. Bait and switch!

First, I am faking that I am coming up to attack Scooter. I assume he is now running recon with his new airships, and so I am hoping that he will see my cavs moving up towards him. If not, he can certainly see the naval stack, and the navy in Yaks.

Only 12 cav, and the navy on show is a few destroyers and a transport 2 galleons that he will be concerned with, but I hope it is enough to give the impression I am coming up top, and will use the railroads to move other things to there. This is a bit of a gamble. If he doesn't take the bait and moves to help Pind I will struggle.

The galleons are empty, but that transport has 4 inf, and the other which will join it from Yaks will have 3 inf 1tank next turn. If I had knew how I were gonna attack, a marine would have been better but c'est la vie. These will move south, leaving a few destroyers to defend the gap. Here I will threaten photography, and the Pind/Scooter pair of cities that are close to each other.

The cavalry can move back to my lovely forest hill that I have been holding for a while. With some more healing in the city. Well actually some will move to that gems hill to try and provoke a counter, although we will see how that works out. The gaining of third ring borders in Borodin has hindered me a bit here.

I have that transport there which I will fill with 4 inf, and then this transport below filled with 4 tanks will press on Pinds cap.

But the biggest invasion force is to the south. I will have to land on flatland, but his cannon thankfully all have CR promos so it should not be the end of the world.

If he tries to recapture his cities it will actually help me a lot here. Hoping that he goes for it tbh. I will move most of my airships to be in support next turn, and I can bomb the defences with the destroyers around there. So I will force the final showdown to be in a city that is on the flat, which I can reduce the defences and pound with air support first. I don't think I could choose a better city to try this on. Plus, it is far away from Scooter, and has the emotive 'capital' feeling to really ensure the fight happens here. Should be able to mop up with the tanks after.

No sims, just a gut feeling I can smash it here. I missed a photo I realised of 2 further transports, but it will be roughly about 8 inf 3 tanks 12 cav and a couple of seige landed, and then another 4 inf 4 tanks amphibiously. This with 2 transports threatening coastally, and about 15 cav and a tank or 2 coming from the north. All backed up with about 15 airships

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

I will add to this that Pindicator has from last turn, with 2 turns of builds before I can hit a MG and 5 inf in the cap, and about 6 cannon, 8 inf and 8 cossacks to spread between his cities. Scooter has an Inf pair in the Pind border city.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Looked in before work, and more problems. Scooter pounded my navy in the strait up by silkmoths with airships. Didn't hit it with anything, but now I have an issue of if I move it then it doesn't get healing... There are 8 destroyers in range of the tile I want to move to (due to a new fort in the middle of the island) to threaten the 2 coastal cities, plus perhaps more built EoT. There's a stack of 5 with no promos on it seems too, so I can even damage them much as they will just get healed. I have 7 destroyers to escort the stack, all but 1 damaged now. Do I just retreat to base or press the attack? Battleships in the theatre in 1 turn.

No other concerns/worries thankfully. Need to add up soldiers to double check if killing off Pind is viable.

Only 4 turns to go until peace with Drey4E expires too.