[Spoilers] Chevalier Gives You Something to Cry Aboot

[williams482]

That's the best avenue of attack for him, but it's not the place he's been laying down rails to speed travel, or where planes and ground troops have been milling about. He seems very interested in Wild and Bruins, which leaves me some faint hope that he's actually intent on attacking England instead.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

shoot, could we just lay him track all the way to suboptimal? That'd be funny.

[williams482]

You know, we do have a military engineer with nothing super urgent to do (although there are plenty of other places in Canada that would benefit from railroads).

I loaded up the save to check on alliance timing. Our DoF with Woden happened on turn 218, meaning he can attack us on t248 as we expected. Suboptimal and Woden signed an alliance on turn 216, meaning they can fight each other on t246. 246 is indeed a smaller number than 248.

I think Woden might actually be considering that. Now, does us placing railroads for him make that more or less likely?

[williams482]

PBEM20 spoiler:

Woden rather strongly implied that he anticipates Suboptimal might be less fond him shortly because of PBEM18.

[williams482]

Turn 243:

Ichabod and Woden both accepted our luxury trade offers, taking all of our cities out of happiness penalties for the time being. This boosts our bpt rate back over 150, and shaves a turn off of Advanced Ballistics. Brazilian troops around Belém have yet to move a muscle, nothing new has shown it's face near Blackhawks, and Suboptimal looks to be getting A Bad Feeling About This as the Punic sappers continue railroading right past Canadian cities:




If that is indeed what Woden has planned, the timing is fortuitous for us. Woden would presumably attack on t246, make slow progress at first against England's initial defenses but start actually taking English cities within a half-dozen turns. Wild and Bruins can survive pure, non-Eleanor-boosted loyalty pressure for a little while if necessary, but as our Cultural alliance with Suboptimal will run out after t255, we should be able to get one with Woden if Woden is so kind as to accept such an offer. Or more likely, the game just ends when Suboptimal (likely the only non-Woden player harboring any hope of winning this thing) is crushed beneath the weight of 4717 milpower worth of tanks and bombers. Oh, and speaking of Suboptimal's chances of winning by other means:



I dunno what Woden did differently this turn, or if this is just the interface being spazzy, but England isn't exactly a shoe-in for a cultural win even if the game is ultimately decided by culture.

As amusing as it would be to give Woden's military engineers an assist, I decide it probably is wiser to get a railroad connection to Red Wings and Capitals. If we're attacked, getting the units they are building into play faster could be significant.

Anyway, now that all our cities will be content for the foreseeable future, let's revisit troop building plans. Any units not done six turns from now (t249) will actually take much longer and probably aren't worth the bother, which meshes very nearly with our upcoming policy swap.

- Stars needs 6 turns to finish an artillery.
- Blues completed a cav, and starts a tank due in 6.
- Kings has a tank due in 4 with 18h overflow. It will start a cav, which will need an extra 6h worth of micro to complete on t249.
- Bruins has a tank corps due in 6.
- Wild has a tank due in 4, but not quite enough production to follow it with a cav. It will resume it's university next.
- Red Wings has a tank due in 6.
- Blackhawks has a tank due in 3 with 27 overflow, plenty for a 2 turn cav after.
- Penguins has a supply convoy due in 2 with 5h overflow, exactly enough to allow a 4 turn field cannon to merge with our second corps.

So, everything fine and dandy there. Cool.

Scores:

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

With the game looking pretty much decided (and has been for ages, as I've been banging the drum), let's retract our concession so the game doesn't end before Woden gets to nuke some English cities.

[williams482]

Agreed. Lurkers, consider our concession revoked until

A) Suboptimal loses a city, or
B) Woden declares war on us, or
C) We stop being smartasses

[williams482]

Turn 244:

Even faster than expected, our lovely Stars campus and Red Wings entertainment complex have permanently vanished beneath the waves, plus an assortment of other tiles:



I immediately place (but do not start) a discounted Water Park on the affected tile at Red Wings. Stars places but does not start a plainly inferior replacement campus between the harbor and the encampment. That will be a mere +1, +2 if we are inexplicably able to construct another district on the flat grass tile 1W of the current encampment spot.

Woden isn't exactly being subtle here, and Suboptimal has clearly caught on but is likely powerless to take real preventative action:



The Punic army's statistical edge over England outstrips our entire military. And unlike Kaiser, Suboptimal does not have a mass of units here for Woden to chew through, only a relative handful of higher end units. He does appear to be frantically building military, with a 3t machine gun under construction at  No idea which nation has the more powerful navy, but I'm not betting on England there. I will bet that the four border cities are all Phoenician within 10 turns, unless Woden has his mind on a dagger strike to the capital which would likely end the game right there.

No movement from Ichabod on any front we can see, excepting a military engineer railroading the Venetian pass. I think there's a pretty good chance Ichabod will attack us as soon as Woden commits himself against England, and we'll be as ready as we can be to defend against that.

We finally get our extra oil:



Little else of note here.

Scores:

[williams482]

Oh, I should have swapped Kings to the Oil tile. That should get enough extra production that I won't need to drop a scientist if I do it next turn.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

So, Woden attacks on turn 246, meaning we can expect Ichabod around 247 or 248 if he needs to reposition?

That...might let us actually finish Advanced Ballistics and START some aa guns! I've no idea how much they cost or if it'd be viable to chop one out (do we even have anything left to chop?), but I think you need about 3 massed around a city to shoot down a plane guaranteed.