[Spoilers] Chevalier Gives You Something to Cry Aboot

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

It would have been too much to ask Firaxis to program traders to "reroute around massive radiation fields", I suppose.

God bless those men, bravely sacrificing their lives on the altar of Commerce.

[civac2]

That really would be a bit ambitious.

Instead of having a trader unit a bit more abstraction would get around this problem as well.

[Kaiser]

Traders are just badly implemented in this game, I really think by now that they should have given more charges to builderds and let them do the route work like in CIV4

[williams482]

Turn 255:

Our trader is indeed no more:



Same can be said of the short-lived city of Natal:



Ichabod has a deal for us:



I feel no pressing need to go awandering through Brazil, and the usual going rate for a luxury is 5gpt which would be much more useful, but should still allow Ichabod to turn a profit on the deal if he does really need this luxury. I'll leave the open borders in the deal because why not, but ask for 5gpt as well.

Our alliance with Suboptimal will expire after this turn. The settler under construction at Foggy Dewhurst has completed, and another begins due in 2. That settler shows it's face in the Truly of the Yard encampment, likely destined for a more inland Glenda (or Canadiens?). Either way, much better than a new city pushed in our direction. Suboptimal also upgraded one of his AA guns to a mobile SAM. Good! That won't help him one bit against us, but it's money not spent elsewhere and it might slow down Woden. Do more! Even better, the Fighter has redeployed from Marina to Foggy Dewhurst. That unit can move back with ease once Suboptimal figures out we're coming for him, but it makes pretty clear he's not expecting anything from us in the immediate future.

The fresh builder out of Wild sprints towards Penguins. Our Builder at Red Wings finally repairs the mine, cutting the build time on the tank from 7 turns down to 6 and allowing a profitable series of tile swaps to work a fish at Red Wings over an unimproved grassland at Blues. Victor and Liang swap places, and I finally give Victor his anti-air promotion. Wild itself can replace our poor irradiated caravan in two turns, and will do so. Unfortunately, Bruins will take a severe loyalty hit if it's still starving next turn once England's culture is deployed against is in full once again, so I have to reassign tiles to bring it to food neutral. This increases the build time on the AA gun from three turns to four, which shouldn't hurt us too much but is definitely not ideal. I think knocking out the last 59h on the watermill would be a very profitable next build, just to avoid these sorts of uncomfortable tradeoffs. Based on the tiles I could assign full-time, that would break even in about 15 turns. Slightly faster, because we'll have unit production modifiers in play before that time has elapsed.

Woden's fleet steams for Nora Batty:



This group (including the invisible submarine armada) represents 982 milpower if fully healthy, with about 40 of that missing due to current injuries. Overall, Woden's milpower is currently dead even with ours at the top of the board, and Ichabod's is all the way down to three digits. He has a modern armor unit two turns from completion in his capital, and is no doubt investing similarly in hsi other cities, but most likely his chance has been spent.

"Modern Pantheon" appears to have expended itself, and Suboptimal is now on track to win by culture in 92 turns if he could somehow survive that long intact. He won't.

Scores:

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I'm kind of surprised the other two haven't conceded by now, given that this is obviously all over but the crying.

Nukes seem to be more or less unstoppable, but that's totally fair - if being first to nuclear weapons can't count as an "I win" button, then what can? The rapidity with which Ichabod's army evaporated is kind of startling but makes sense, since it's 7 units or so erased every time Woden launches one, which is probably about once every 5 turns. That's obviously unsustainable losses to anyone fighting Woden. Moral of the story: sucks to suck, everyone else. Welcome to life as Canada.

Also good news that sub is buildign settlers instead of units. He's really all-in on this pacifist playthrough, which explains SO MUCH about his play this game. Although not all of it (ie, never really trying to flip Wild, or why he built the biggest military in the game in order to conquer, uh, Geneva). Anyway, once Woden finishes razing his coast I think he should have about 3 intact cities left, not counting the new plants, and we can hope to take one of those fairly early in the war. We're still totally obsolete ourselves, but we have AA guns and I think unless sub gets nukes himself we actually can outbuild him! Let Canada colonize the colonizer! Down with England!

[williams482]

Oh, damn. I meant to swap civics research to upgrade our two frigate fleets. I'll do that last turn.

The hope, of course, is that we can pick up ahead of Compo ahead of Woden's coastal razing spree. Without battleships that's completely hopeless, but with them we at least have a shot. Woden also might not care if we ultimately snipe a city or two he could have taken with a more focussed assault, because we sure as hell aren't winning no matter what.

[Kaiser]

No Tanks should still be in the game pretty much even though they are not as dominant as when you get them earlier and they rule the world. However, you cannot hold anything as Woden then just nukes your army afterwards. He has 1.5 full cores remaining and Ichabod has no army left to threaten what remains of Wodens orignal core.

The Nuke plan was mine as well, but when Ichabod backstabbed me I was doomed to never get there although I was not that far off anymore thanks to have being forced away from tanks to AT crews due to my Oil situation.
I even set some places nicely up for Nuke production and Woden is now benefitting of it :D

That said, your shot in this game likely is domination by taking all 4 capitals (that includes my former one) in one turn. I am nearly up to date with your thread, so I can leave this comment:
If anybody can pull off a 4 capital late game snipe, then it is Team Canada! Go Canada!

[williams482]

So I have the ability to take cities with artillery, if left alone. And against Suboptimal or Ichabod if I were to engage right now, I would be more or less left alone, with relatively weak ground forces and a handful of planes hanging around to engage my troops. What I can't do is take cities quickly, or defend against nukes effectively (with the possible exception of any city that has Victor in it and AA guns around it, which I plan to exploit to full effect in absorbing Suboptimal's first strike, but is otherwise largely useless offensively). Getting our hands on a quasi-modern air force would be a huge step in that direction, and will also take an ungodly long time. Apparently there's no production card that works on air units until Globalization? And we sure as shit don't have any of those awesome industrial valleys like the one Brazil just eviscerated, or gorgeous hilly wonderlands like occupied Egypt to power through those outrageously expensive units in any reasonable timeframe.

My plan at this point is roll over Suboptimal as efficiently as possible, hopefully without needing to raze anything, and hope that when the dust clears I've gained something resembling a real core which I can ramp up further and use to push towards some useful military tech. If Ichabod has managed to shut down Woden's production of nukes and both civs are still at each other's throats and relatively weak in existing ground forces, we reevaluate the situation and see if there's an avenue for a triple capital snipe.

I think it's highly improbable that Woden doesn't manage to just plow through Ichabod after replenishing enough of a skeleton ground military to capture crippled cities, at which point Woden can just nuke us with impunity until we surrender if he feels like it (and I don't think he even needs to declare war on us to do so). Not great prospects there, but stranger things have happened, and my general approach remains what it has been since the start: play this out as best I can, and hope to get lucky.

[Kaiser]

I tested this when I decided to pursue nukes myself. You can throw nukes hitting targets which you are at peace with, however everything with a DOF gets a 2 tile radius around it which cannot be nukied. Yes, this works on units as well, so you could protect other players cities from normal nukes by standing next to them. Thermonuclear nukes hit a 2 tile radius, so your unit is safe but no the city it is next to.

[TheArchduke]

This is ridiculous, I really need to test this myself.