[Spoilers] Chevalier Gives You Something to Cry Aboot

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

It looks like Ichabod caught Woden's empire right in the most vulnerable spot, and either Woden underestimated first strike potential OR he overestimated his air force and nukes to hold the line.

I think long-term Phoenicia should recover, especially since he's got the superweapons and Ichabod doesn't, but man he's making a game of it. We've also passed Sub in Empire score now, yay! We might manage a successful offensive war if Phoenicia mauls him badly enough.

[williams482]

You know, we don't just have an emergency that lets us declare war on Suboptimal. We have (lesser) emergencies available that allow us to declare on Woden and Ichabod too, regardless of existing DoFs and alliances, if we can make sure we have enough diplo favor to pass them. Grievances and occupation of Suboptimal's capital (which is not guaranteed, but if we can't pull that off none of this is relevant) will put a serious dent in our favor generation and will likely put us at a deficit for a bit, and the others may catch wise if we pull it off the first time, but there's potential for us to launch some out of nowhere surprise attacks (admittedly without the first strike) if we want to.

I suppose I should probably ask the lurkers, though: Is this okay? I'm trying to exploit what is very obviously a bug, that the other players likely have no reason to anticipate. I doubt it matters that I'm mostly doing this to get around my crippling leader "advantage," if this is okay for me then it's presumably equally acceptable for a good civ with the first turn order slot.

[williams482]

Turn 252:

No cities have been taken this turn, but Ichabod's milpower has fallen considerably, and occupied Misty Mountains has zero health or wall defenses remaining:



The fact that this city still stands strikes me as a fairly damning statement on the state of Woden's ground forces, but I suppose it could be just a tactic. Also don't look now, but brave little Canada is now 2nd in the world in military power, and only 92 points out of first. This is illusory, of course, as a decent chunk of that Canadian army is near-useless cavalry units.

Suboptimal has belatedly gotten in on the "settle more cities" thing, replacing Cleggy with the inland Peter Sallis:



He also has another Settler on the way at Foggy Dewhurst, due in 3. I imagine that one will settle a Howard replacement on the cow tile 4NE of Marina (although he'd need to wait an additional two turns for the fallout on that tile to clear up). Or maybe he'll finally claim the Canadiens spot? Regardless, I hope this doesn't cause loyalty problems significant enough to force us to raze these cities. Unlike Woden and Ichabod, we're not just trying to overpower a competitor, we need to make real economic gains in this upcoming war or the entire enterprise is pointless. Here I go again pretending we have any chance at all.

Glenda has taken considerable damage, but it's not clear where from. Suboptimal moves first, so he couldn't have killed the units that delivered these blows. Perhaps Woden has a carrier on the water, and is bombing the city with planes? That's another unit I've never built in this game and have no idea how it works.



Wild finishes the university and starts a builder, due in 3. That actually cuts the ETA on flight down to 5 turns, meaning if I can time the chops right, the balloon will come out simultaneous with the first two AA guns. That will require that the Military Engineer already in the area railroad a path to the tile we plan to chop (the tundra forest deer, I'll replace it with a lumber mill), then remove the camp so the builder can actually harvest the resource. That will allow us to start our attack one turn faster, which is great news. If legally permitted, of course.

Apparently our spy didn't die, he was just resting. He's back in Blues now, ready to roll. I send him to Vítoria, a relatively backlines Brazilian city with a campus district, where he'll steal tech boosts for me until either he gets captured, or I sign an alliance with Ichabod and lose the ability to spy on him.

Suboptimal's rock band, "Modern Pantheon", continues it's tour of Canadian entertainment complexes. I aggressively do not care how much tourism these guys generate, so go at it. Not only is Suboptimal currently getting crushed and about to be double teamed, but Woden is generating 50% more tourism per turn than he is.

We're approaching decision time on if I should put three turns into Reformed Church to be able to upgrade our two frigate fleets at a discount. At this point I'm leaning yes, I think we'll need to capture both Compo and Marina in short succession have much chance at all at keeping them, and that's going to require water-based ranged strikes stronger than Frigates can deliver.

Scores:

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Worth running listening posts in England for the combat boost? Or do we get more value from stealing tech?

Carriers can hold two aircraft, either fighters or bombers, and just serve as a mobile airstrip basically. They have melee stats and presumably air defense but I've never used them in actual combat, just in games that go late against the AI when I hit my "I'm bored of hitting end turn, time to conquer everyone" phase. Totally possible that some chunk of Woden's power is in carriers, which, while valuable, are entirely useless as combatants in their own right.

[williams482]

We actually can't run spy missions of any sort against England or Phoenicia because we are currently allies. Otherwise, we totally would be doing that. As is, stealing random boosts is probably the most valuable thing we can do.

[williams482]

Awesome, thank you all for confirming.

[williams482]

Turn 253:

Milpower scores for both superpowers continue to plummet. Misty Mountains remains defenseless yet not captured, and now both Natal and Fez share that state from opposite sides of the border:



The gossip report reveals that Brazil does (or did) have at least one Minas Geraes in the water, it pillaged a fishing boat. The City of Curitiba also took damage, but from natural causes:



Blues completed it's theater square and starts an armory, due in 5. Capitals completed a shrine and starts a temple due in 6.

Suboptimal's military has not added any units I can spot, and has barely moved the ones it has. Phoenicia does indeed have a carrier group off the western coast of England, transporting four bombers in two ships. With both ranged and melee vessels also present here, Glenda seems a lock to fall next turn, and it should be interesting to see if Woden keeps or burns the city:



Relevant note for the future, Nora Batty is a captured religious city state (I don't recall which one).

Right now I plan to start on Reformed Church next turn, timed for a policy swap simultaneous with the completion of Flight. At that point the next relevant military techs will be some distance away, so I'll consider lifting Natural Philosophy for Colonization to speed up filling in former English lands. It's possible that's a foolish objective and those cities will never pay for themselves, but they do have chops present and that helps things along considerably. The primary objective of that policy swap is of course upgrading our frigates into battleships.

Our alliance with Suboptimal will have expired on our t256, and we'll see how bad our pre-dark-age loyalty situation is then.

Scores:

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Yeah, Woden is back on top of the military board again, and his nukes are more or less unstoppable unless Ichabod could take out the cities producing them. That means that eventually the Brazilian army is going to melt like snow. Plus, bombers can hop around more quickly than AA can and Brazil has a huge border to defend.

My prognosis is that Woden is going to finish savaging Suboptimal back to the Stone Age with that CVBG, then direct it against the Brazilian coast, at which point the game will end, if it hasn't already once Ichabod and sub finish this same analysis (but obviously they're using different analysts than the Canadian government or this game would have gone in a VERY different direction).

New stretch goal: Second-place finish for Canada?

[williams482]

I've been mulling over our chances of making any gains against Phoenicia in the long term, and as you've articulated there just aren't any. Our standing army will get nuked out of existence, and that's the only thing we have resembling an advantage relative Woden because he probably has two or three times our production capacity.

Making real gains in England (conquests plus a small settler push) and letting Woden beat the sod out of Ichabod could maybe possibly push us to second on the board if that Punic/Brazilian war drags out enough without the two of them deciding to set differences aside for a bit and wreck us instead. Seems like a worthy goal to me!

[williams482]

Turn 254:

Glenda is gone:



The Gossip screen reveals that the Phoenician people were really excited about all those seaside resorts until their cruel and uncaring leader ordered them destroyed. Loyalty pressure on that city couldn't have been very significant, as the one English city within nine tiles has no great works and seems doomed to fall in the near future anyway. I guess Woden just doesn't want to bother trying to defend his captures with no ground forces to speak of.

And, uhh, speaking of, those defenseless cities on both sides of the Punic/Brazilian border remain eminently capturable to anyone who could march a unit into one. Apparently, nobody can. Just look at the scoreboard: The strongest military in the world is... Canada! Yup, we all saw that coming.

Suboptimal merge two machine guns into a corps, no other observable military power changes. He does appear to be congregating his best troops around the capital, but we'll see what they do when he suddenly has someone to fight on land.

In lesser news, we're going to lose a trader next turn:



Don't let the graphic fool you, units always initially render pointing this direction. That unit has been heading northeast for the past several turns and will obviously continue on that path until it can go no further. Apparently traders do heal damage while in motion, because this trader still has 10 HP despite having spent three turns (or maybe just two? Not sure when in the turn that damage is applied) cruising through fallout, suffering 50 damage a pop.

Progress continues on AA guns and flight. If I were suboptimal I'd find our scouting of areas with no fighting highly suspicious, and I'd be loading the obvious front for us to attack with every ground unit I could scrape up, just to say "bring it, we're ready" as plainly as possible. I don't know how suboptimal would respond if he anticipated a backstab from us, and if he does do that we'll attack him anyway, so I guess it doesn't matter much.

Scores: