[Spoiler] Kaiser has a plan

[roland of gilead]

with any luck when it flips it produces tanks in his back lines.

[Kaiser]

Woden attacked and ran over me like hell, I actually need a moment to analyze this as his damage was again unexpectedly high. I take you on the journey so you can help me figure out how he broke through with this few damage.

Firstly, this is from last turn, I reloaded the save and checked the Health of his units.



The two stars are his two FC Armies (one of which has about 50% life from an earlier Arty Shot, lets call if "FC half"), so far I have only seen one Biplane and the one Arty Army with a Ballon.
His Tanks show a movement of 6 which they can get with the GG (Jose) and the policy Logistics (4 base +1 GG +1 Logistics), however Tank A indicates only 4 movement while being in his territory (and I also see no real option for him to have started in a different territory) so that would rule Logisitcs out, but then how does he get to 6 movement with his tanks?

While pondering about this mistery, here is the status of his tanks:
- A 100 Life
- B 90+ Life
- C 90+ Life
- D 90+ Life (estimate)
- E 90+ Life
- F 100 Life
- G 50+ Life

None of his tanks has an upgrade on this turn.

And now to the greeting this turn



The letters are best guesses, but I am relatively sure about G and A. He overran 2 AT Crew Armies and a FC Army while apparently spreading his shots from his FC Armies and Biplane (the FC Army was destroyed by the Biplane)
While I expected him to kill one AT Crew Army, loosing 2 and the FC Army while making basically no damage to him took me by surprise.

Maybe you have some insights, I will be off PC this afternoon but will play my turn tonight

Here is a screenshot about expected damage ranges between Tanks and AT Crews, it should be more favourable than this for us as we were defending in districts and with support bonus

[roland of gilead]

I can't get online really till tomorrow afternoon unfortunately

i was worried about the way we were lined up. We took every defensive advantage we had but we also surrendered first strike and i think that's the issue.

biplanes, artillery F/C hitting then he has the stronger units.

he would have been getting minor or even major wins on every attack unfortunately.

I am not even sure what we do. I can only think of 2 options.

We retreat AT crews into the cities for extra defense bonus and ranged behind. trouble with that is he will just pick off our walls with rtillery or biplanes or battle ships.

or we get artillery in the cities and AT at least under the walls so he finishes his turn at least under the walls so we can return fire.

we need to bring the battle under our walls without losing cities. not even sure that is possible and afraid i am not sure how the hell we do it.

[Kaiser]

We need to start picking tanks away while fighting under our cities, you are right. I have been thinking about it when possible todayand it really is a tough defense here. I think I have an idea how to proceed but am in no state to play right now.

We are really biting the bullet here with the AT crews, which we were forced into by the very unfortunate oil distribution on this map. The AT Crews are a particularily poor design in my opinion, as they are defending against Tanks as good as Tanks would (70 +10 = 80), but are worse against everything else, especially ranged units.
To get to them you have to research replacable parts (same cost, close position to combustion for tanks, but you do typically do not want Infantry) and then Chemistry for a whopping 985 into the next era.
At least they cost only 400 to 480 for Tanks, but at a base Strength -10 and 2 less moves, they are a pure defensive unit. We have to bear the first strike here, as we are unable to produce relevant offensive units (still the oil situation, I did actually not yet research combustion as I could maximum field 1 tank anyway)

I think you are right that I placed my AT crews badly in the N, I actually had one on Casa instead of teh HS.

More tomorrow

[roland of gilead]

We need to start picking tanks away while fighting under our cities, you are right. I have been thinking about it when possible todayand it really is a tough defense here. I think I have an idea how to proceed but am in no state to play right now.

We are really biting the bullet here with the AT crews, which we were forced into by the very unfortunate oil distribution on this map. The AT Crews are a particularily poor design in my opinion, as they are defending against Tanks as good as Tanks would (70 +10 = 80), but are worse against everything else, especially ranged units.
To get to them you have to research replacable parts (same cost, close position to combustion for tanks, but you do typically do not want Infantry) and then Chemistry for a whopping 985 into the next era.
At least they cost only 400 to 480 for Tanks, but at a base Strength -10 and 2 less moves, they are a pure defensive unit. We have to bear the first strike here, as we are unable to produce relevant offensive units (still the oil situation, I did actually not yet research combustion as I could maximum field 1 tank anyway)

I think you are right that I placed my AT crews badly in the N, I actually had one on Casa instead of teh HS.

More tomorrow

take your time to play when you have time to think. 

Won't help us here but we can play some dual matches with advanced era starts against each other over the coming while if you like to try different strategy's here. 

normally on defense in a bad situation i want them hitting my city taking damage then i counter attack but doing that here could really just see the city's gone.

[Kaiser]

City defenses are really bad by now as their damage is based on the best unit you have without any bonusses or promotions. As an example, our city walls shoot back with Strength 77 vs . Tanks Armies with 80 +17 Army +4 wars of religion +5 GG =106 +defensive terrain/promotions.

Tanks are really the go to unit as we can see here with their counter being barely able to fight on even footing and an easier prey against everything else.

I have send a PM to Woden for a potential bug:

Hey Woden,

your tanks show funky movement values.


I understand
- the tank under your GG (hill) has 5 movement (so I assume you are not running Logistics)
- the tank outside your GG range in my territory shows 4 movement (promoted last turn I assume)
- the tank on my Theatre (hill) shows 5 movement (4 base +1 for GG)

I do not understand
- the tank on Casa and my HS show 6 movement (outside your territory but in reach of your GG)
- the tank who killed my Curassier shows 5 movement (inside your territory, but I do not believe you run Logistics, but outside of reach of your GG)

The tanks with the funky movement share the fact of being in open terrain similar to the Heavy Chariot requirements, I think you upgraded some of your tanks from Heavy Chariots (my best guess in 3 or 4) and I fear that they might have retained the passive movement ability.

This likely is a bug (as far as I know) and I would like to ask you to check and verify this internally. If you conclude as well that this is a bug, the easiest workaround would be for you to delete all tanks
Or alternatively just watch out to not move more than their movement as tanks should be.

If there is no bug, please make sure to leave an explanation in your thread as I am very curious how this movement discrepancy works out as a non-bug.

Best regards
Kaiser

Here is the remaining report.



This was Suboptimals answer to a DoF, as our peace treaty runs out it 5, I assume he is going to backstab me. Alternatively he wins the game in 36 turns via Culture, which funnily I could not check in the interface this turn.



I pulled out troops around KG to try to hold it, I was able to kill one Tank (near full Health) and damage 2 others slightly.
I decided to kill the one on the GP, so I can fake a rebuild of the GMC. This was also the only tank in reach which was not on a Hill. He will likely plunder the AH next turn as well to keep me from buying units with faith



I expect him to go for EM next, Woden understands city defenses a lot better at this stage of the game as he has conquered AK and Bologna while their walls were still up. EM has its walls intact and 98 CS, so I would expect it to not only hold, but get only marginal damage.
My gut feeling tells me that it will be gone next turn though. I have the feeling that the Walls only take the damage when they are at full health and that you can fight directly the city when you have damaged them. He has a BS in range to shoot once on the EM and then can bring 5 Tanks and a Cavalry onto the CC.

Hopefully he overextends instead an goes for my FC Conga Line between KG and EM, they are pracitcally useless anyway so I used two to chip away on his tanks for 5 damage each and then they are bodyblocking the approaches to KG and GM.



The astute reader might have noticed the big jump for suboptimal, he has finished several (I think 3) research projects to arrive get Albert Einstein before Ichabod. He is not yet at research Labs (it has been my last tech researched) but he will boost him signigicantly once he gets there.
He already is in the winning more stage if this game :D

[roland of gilead]

your middle position and lack of oil really have led us here.

perhaps we undervalued tundra here is a lesson to take forwards.

but not having it in reach of capital seems unfair.

[Kaiser]

I think that there is a kind of fake weather taking place in game, meaning hurricanes and droughts happen frequently in the same reagion. While Hurricanes sometimes bring at least yields, I have yet to see that a drought brings anything other than a mult-turn yield reduction.

Our N was called disaster area for a reason as there were easily 10 droughts already in that region over the course of the game, that and the way more attractive and power SE led to me ignore it. I was also hoping that there would have been more Oil in our S desert or balanced near my capital, but I believe by now the map was rolled and never checked for Oil (and I guess uranium as well, so our now very far fetched nuke em to hell plan is also luck dependant)

[roland of gilead]

yeah agreed it doesn't look to have been balanced.

that desert had to have a good chance of having oil but didn't.

no one can blame us for going after the land we did it is good land.

uranium can be anywhere so hopefully that is better. Hopefully we last to find out.

[Kaiser]

I am officially blind, tanks have the same ability as Heavy Chariots