Okay. I think if you aren't going to need the 1k back, I should probably use some, if not all, of it on monuments next turn... I don't really want to do that, but some of the cities that need monuments have very significant build queue backlogs (looking at you, Nsibidi), and I am not sure how I will get anywhere near Nationalism without some kind of culture boost. If CMF beats us there by 10 turns while we're at war, we will be at a serious disadvantage, unfortunately... I also need to get to Industrialization ASAP, but I think I'm closer than that than I am to Nationalism, though I guess we will know for sure once your IZs finish and you buy your workshops. If you want me to save some gold for you for shipyards/workshops/upgrades, though, just let me know, ofc.
|
[SPOILERS] Woden and ljubljana like boats
|
Here is a thought - Kaiser is not TAD, and his ships actually cannot retreat from me because they only have 5 movement vs. my 6 from the GA. I do not know which direction they went in, but my objectives in the south for this turn should be to zero out the health at Jobs while also finding Kaiser's ships and getting in some more free attacks. If they retreated NW to their cities we may be able to trap them in the bay up there, and if they retreated due W then they will be out of position to defend his cities, so I think it's kind of a win/win for us.
You will also note that I have kind of accepted that the fleet will be split at this point. This is because we have seen enough Kaiser/TAD ships in the north that I think we can be confident that TAD and Kaiser will not be able to combine their fleets into something capable of defeating either the northern or southern contingent. That means that splitting the fleet makes sense due to efficiency of conquest and because it allows us to occupy both TAD and Kaiser's production centers at the same time to prevent massing of ships. I only wish I had managed to get the GA in the north where it can help siege TAD's cities...but getting in a fast conquest of Kaiser's core is not a bad outcome either. I am just worried that after we do that the southern fleet will be far, far away from any other targets while the northern fleet gets bogged down at TAD's capital... I might start my GA on a long journey up north depending on the situation with Kaiser's ships, much though I don't want to have to do that... Ideally I could find some way to trick Kaiser into killing it for me, but I doubt he will be that obliging... Meanwhile, I think I will focus on keeping the ship numbers down up north for a bit, and maybe take down the walls at some easier city without a frigate inside (eg Big Brother) while I wait for the GA to arrive. edit: On the other hand, if we are worried about CMF vulturing some of Kaiser's cities or moving a bunch of caravels over just to stand in our way and block us (as perhaps we should be), maybe keeping the GA in the south does make more sense... That would come with a significant risk of getting bogged down at the rest of these TAD cities with their high defensive strength, but it could be worth it. edit2: One exception to the "only Woden takes TAD/Kaiser's cities" rule - I forgot that scoring a kill is worth a huge 5 ES. I think I'll probably need both to have a realistic chance at a heroic age, unfortunately...TAD and Kaiser just do not have enough ships left to get us there all by themselves. I will also pick up 3 from a splendid IZ for sure, but other than that I am kind of at a loss, and am genuinely afraid that I will need to build Machu Picchu in large part for the ES... It looks like conquering capitals is worth 4 ES too, so maybe I should do that as well even if they will flip back and just have you recapture. I wonder if that would trigger the bonus ES twice, actually? I am afraid that my taking TAD's capital would destroy the harbor but we might need to risk it... I am also now actually kind of glad that I failed to kill TAD's embolon caravel a few turns ago (!!) because that knocked it into promotion range and now I will score 3 more ES this turn by killing it with an unpromoted unit (4 when you add in the dedication). We could also decide that your second GA next era is worth more than my HA, which is plausible since you will be the one with ironclads that would really benefit from +2 movement. I do not think there is any chance of us getting both, though - probably one player will need to take both capitals and score both kills to have a realistic shot at it. I am honestly not confident that you have a real chance at a GA even with all of that, though...you need 48 ES, and IZ + Stave Church + 2 kills + 2 capitals = 25, and I can't think of any feasible way for you to get the other 23. At least on my end I have a lower requirement (41 more ES) and will pull in something like 15 points for free from ship kills, which I think makes an HA possible if still something of a heavy lift. What are your thoughts, though? edit3: This also means that for both TAD and Kaiser we need to make sure that their capital is not the last city taken, or we lose 4 ES. Shouldn't be an issue for Kaiser, but for TAD it might be tricky since his capital will be very hard to crack. edit4: We may want to offer marco a DoF extension on t151 if we go with the Heroic Age plan. If he accepts, we will have more time to catch up production-wise and consolidate our gains, should be guaranteed to hit factories and Nationalism, and won't have to fight them until we have the +2 movement in place. We can still hurt them sooner than that if we want to by vulturing cities from China, assuming we can conquer TAD and Kaiser in time. There is one big drawback to this plan, though, which is that it might give them enough time to get to Steel which would be gg lol. It depends on where Steel is in the tech tree, which we unfortunately have no way of knowing anytime soon... Or will Steel not actually be as bad for us as I think it will be since battleships are barely even stronger than caravels on defense and draw from the same resource pool as CMF's ironclads? Idk, what do you think?
Turn 143 - Phoenicia
This position just got A LOT more complicated...  Fort Lakton is a canal city! Unfortunately, I didn't discover this until I had already finished 90% of my deploy up north, and also made some errors in so doing that will increase the damage that this is likely to do to us... The main one is that apparently pillaging a trade route DOES end your movement even though pillaging something else does not, what the heck? Civwiki strongly implied that this would not be the case ('plundering...requires less MP than pillaging tile improvements or districts'), but apparently I read too much into that and am now getting burned for not testing it myself. Because of that, I couldn't promote the highlighted Embolon caravel, and now it will probably die next turn and my position here will be vastly weakened. I also managed to get TAD's promoted caravel without exposing a ship to city fire from his capital, but I had to attack with an wounded caravel to do it, which means he could kill that one too. So TAD can make some trades up here, but they're not necessarily good ones at first glance. For every wounded caravel of mine that he kills, he will have to expose a frigate to a counterattack. We will need to use your caravels on offence next turn if Kaiser's northern frigates (yeah, there are two of them, apparently) come out to play too, but I thiiiink we should be able to kill any frigates north of the highlighted caravel that the two of them use to try to capitalize on my discombobulated deploy. But Fort Lakton is the nail in the coffin that makes this position untenable, because...  Kaiser's ships are about to pour north through the canal city, at which point we will be badly outgunned there - they will have 9 frigates to my 2 - and in a losing position. Starting next turn, I am going to retreat from the north, then wheel around and re-engage when my next wave of ships arrive. There is a big next wave coming, with 2 new caravels, four frigates freed up at Official Visit, and 4-5 more to be upgraded in the core once I discover Mercantilism. It will be a fighting retreat, and I will take caravel for frigate trades when I can get them (and I expect to get several next turn), but I'm overextended here and can't afford to lose this group of ships. I did pillage two of TAD's trade routes (including the one that is going to cost me my Embolon caravel  ), and bought 5 monuments in my core. The rest of my cash is being saved for the next round of frigate upgrades, which will come in 3-4 turns. You should be able to get both TAD cities next turn too, of course.Also, CMF is being as obnoxious as he possibly can be with his units on both sides of the front short of occupying the harbors, and I think the only reason he didn't do that earlier was that he was going for Akkad instead. I would have had a decent shot at killing Kaiser's southern caravel this turn if not for that, and definitely could have killed TAD's frigate in the north, making two ships saved only by this interference. I think for future PBEM's I will favor a use-your-best-judgement ban on this kind of thing...it is frankly a little ridiculous how much advantage he could pull out of these delay tactics if they were really optimized (seriously, he could delay us 5-10 turns if he really tried to block all the cities, which in this situation could easily swing the whole game in his favor). Meanwhile, as CMF is running peacetime blockades against us in our war, in his own war, China is starting to die:  No idea what roland and suboptimal are doing with their navies if not defending roland's best cities...I think if they both threw everything they had at this push right now, they would have a chance, if a very small one. We know that CMF has a number of ships scattered around the globe getting in our way, and the most recent 400-500 of his milpower increase is most likely still in his core because it was just produced. I think they'd have a shot at taking him on if they coordinated an attack right now, and even if they wouldn't win, right now is definitely the time to at least try... Instead, roland is building medieval walls in his capital, which, if that's not an admission of defeat, I'm not sure what is. oh also World Congress, right. You already know this, but there were emergencies proposed against both us and Russia. What you don't know is the outcome...  ...an exact tie, which we won! Great read on pouring all your votes into defeating this. The other vote is also interesting:  It failed only because TAD put votes into helping out CMF. Looks like he is playing kingmaker here, and not in our favor. Annoying, but not exactly shocking, and I can't say I wouldn't be doing the same myself in his position. Do you think you could post screenshots of TAD and Kaiser's deploys before playing the turn? I expect that this is the turn that TAD and Kaiser will sail all their frigates out into the open and attack, which would lead to a really bad turn for us up north, with me losing perhaps 3 caravels and getting another badly injured. If they do that, we will need to decide how many frigates we want to kill in response and how many caravels we want to save by retreating them. Hopefully we will get lucky and they will give us one more turn while they wait for Kaiser's southern fleet to be in range, in which case I will breathe a huge sigh of relief and run away, but I am not counting on it. I also do not know what my southern fleet should do next - probably try to crack Fort Lakton, but if its position is sufficiently sheltered, I may not be able to do that... edit: I also gave you some niter this turn so my quad builds don't get upgraded - I will ask for it back plus more when I swap back to Retinues in 4 turns, if that's okay. 
I was able to see how much favor TAD and Kaiser spent and knew I had to use all of mine. If you exit out of the World Congress screen, you can see the ribbon and it shows how much each player has left. Including the free vote, I saw that TAD voted 3 times and Kaiser voted 4 times. I was not sure who wins but it seems we did. Yah!
Bad part is, I think they get their favor back for losing and I don't because I "won". As for your Heroic Age and taking the capitals, I don't think that would be a good idea because I don't think you will be able to hold them, especially in a dark age. You don't have any cities near them to provide loyalty, mine won't provide you with loyalty, and you are in a dark age. You would need to run cards and would be better off without running them. Besides, I think we will be fighting CMF/Marco before this era ends and will probably get lots of era points killing their ships. Also, I would like to get another golden age and would need those points. I can make up the remaining filling out my religion, starting an inquisition, converting Kaiser's holy city, making a fleet, getting a general, first kill with a general, and so on. Looked at what was available for pillaging yesterday. Combined, they have 14 harbor pillages, 3 lumbermills, 15 mines, 9 pastures/plantations/quarries, 4 campuses pillages, and 2 government plaza pillages. Using current yields, this will give me 1,786 science, 1,034 culture, 1,431 faith, and 10,784 gold. This will go up as I complete more techs. After Mass Production, I will shoot for Stirrups and Education as quick techs. Also, this is only what I can see and I we still have to defog 4 of Kaiser's cities. Some of those are partially defog but his 2 southern cities are completely unknown. The culture should be enough to get to Nationalism if it is behind Humanism but if it is in the next tier, we might not get there in time for war with CMF. I don't think we have to worry about gold in the immediate future and coal will be the limiting factor. The biggest huddle here is pillaging it all. I will take all your niter and should have plenty to give back in 4 turns. I hooked up my 2nd niter and Official Visit has one that I can't pillage, so I will be making 6 per turn, starting next turn. Pillaging trade routes is like attacking, you only need minimal movement points but it ends your units turn. Didn't know you didn't know that. My bad! Kaiser's southern fleet won't have enough movement points to get all through the canal. He can get 1 frigate just passed the city and 1 in the city. If he goes that route, I suggest chasing him with your southern fleet. We need to prevent him from getting to TAD's borders and activating Crusade. I think you may lose one of your 3 ships in the bay but Kaiser's frigates in the north can't sail south because of ZOC and your caravel by The Right to Know. Also, I don't think they are coordinating movements since TAD has already played and I doubt Kaiser is even a wake right now. I think they are going through the motions, so don't expect some grand counterattack. They also can't see much passed their borders, so they don't know if there is a large fleet in the north or if you ships are scattered. And next turn, they will be blind in the south too. How much did you get from the trade route pillages? I want to makes sure my thinking that Raid doesn't apply is correct.
I got roughly 250 from each TR IIRC - obviously if that is less than you get in raid, I will not pillage any more.
I think you are right about gold - if you are okay with this, I think I will buy libraries in my campus cities and maybe universities too after you get your shipyards and workshops. As for techs, I wouldn't recommend Education/Stirrups unless you think you'll gain something concrete out of them (eg if you are building universities soon or have a lot of pastures). I think we need to put as many beakers as we can towards Industrial and SP - even though we don't know where they are for sure, we can still put beakers towards random techs that could be prerequisites and have a decent chance of not wasting them. Education and Stirrups on the other hand are both dead ends IIRC. I sure hope you are right about the lack of a grand counterattack...maybe I am just worried because my deploy didn't go as planned. I will definitely lose the embolon caravel, and I will probably lose the mid-health one by Open Government if TAD moves his frigates forward. If Kaiser kills the embolon caravel, another of my caravels will be trapped and I will have to trade it for Kaiser's caravel, but that's not actually that bad a deal so whatever. With optimal play, TAD can get the redlined caravel too, but he will have to find it first. We will see what happens - if the two of them don't coordinate, a halfhearted counterattack will not work and cause them to lose frigates in bad trades (really any trade where they lose frigates is a bad one at this point...). If you think you can get a GA with the capital + elimination points, I'm fine with that, I just am not sure I see how the math works out. You need 48 points, and the proposed items plus easy extras get you: Two eliminations = 10 points (if CMF does not vulture us) Two capitals = 8 points Splendid IZ = 3 points Stave Church = 4 points Holy city converted = 4 points (this will likely require spending quite a lot of faith though that could be used on GMC ships) Religion completed = 3 points, 4 if you are first (though see above, not sure how many units it is worth giving up for this) First inquisition = 2 points (also costs faith = units) Fleet = 1 point General = 1 point Win combat with general = 2 points Industrial tech + civic = 2 points Coal unit = 1 point Getting all of this requires a big outlay of faith on multiple apostles and missionaries, and you may want to figure out how many ships it will cost you to do this before deciding if it is worth it. It also still leaves you 6-7 points short - do you have ideas of how to get the rest of those points? My math also might be incorrect, so feel free to correct me there as well. The really disastrous outcome that we want to make sure we avoid though is spending a bunch of faith on this and ending up in a Normal Age with significantly fewer ships than we would otherwise have, so we should have a complete plan for getting all 48 ES before we commit to it. Also, what dedication were you hoping for? I am not sure 2 movement on ships will be worth it if the price is having significantly fewer ships with which to exploit the bonus movement. I would also be surprised if we could both get a GA next era, and I think we will have to pick one of us to go for it. I do not have anything else in the pipeline besides ship kills, the IZ, and maybe Machu Picchu, which I doubt will get me close by itself unless I can kill a LOT of CMF's ships in the first few turns of the war. Like, I will probably need to kill 15-20 CMF ships to make it happen if I don't get any other ES besides the IZ and what's left of TAD and Kaiser's ships. I am fine with you being the one who gets the GA, we should just plan it all out and make sure that both the math will work out and the faith expenditure will be worth it. edit: One more thing - I can't move through your cities, right? If that's the case, I should consider taking Fort Lakton initially, even if it's just for few turns, so that I can move the GA through the canal to have it help out with the remaining TAD cities, especially his capital. I don't know how feasible that is, though, since it might just flip to you before we even get a chance to attack it...not that that's really anything to complain about, of course  .edit2: Here is one other idea for how we could use our gold to hurt CMF, though I admit it is pretty dubious - we could gift a bunch of it and maybe some niter (though I hate to give up niter) to roland for upgrades. He has a bunch of outdated ships sitting around at his capital just from what my traders can see. I am not sure how much damage that would do, eg if the ships he would get would actually take out any of CMF's or if they would just die horribly because he is too badly outnumbered, but it could be worth considering. I'm not sure I'm advocating for this per se, but if we knew exactly how he would use it, there is an argument to be made that it would help us more for him to have two more frigates than for me to have a library (though I do need libraries pretty badly too, so I'm not sure I'd actually make that argument).
GMC is for only land units, not ships. Only Indonesia can faith buy ships, so no loss there. I think this game will be over once we determine who is dominate on the ocean, so not sure how important it will be to chase Golden Ages. That being said, I think we can figure out how to get us there. I think the next era won't be for a while.
One pitfall of letting the canal city revolt is that CMF might be able to snipe it and raze it. I don't know if it is worth the risk. We will have to determine that when we get closer to taking the city. Also, you may need your GA in the south. The 2 cities of Kaiser's that are still in the fog can be hit only by 3 ships, maybe. One is his capital, so may cause some issue getting the walls down. You have more tiles open at TAD's capital, so will probably take 3 turns to remove the walls. I will discuss a bit more when it is my turn on a plan going forward. As for pillaging trade routes, I don't think I was getting better but I will see if I come across one. Regardless, it might be better to pillage them if you have the opportunity simply because we don't know which routes will end as I pillage harbors.
Okay, that seems good to me then. I do think it could be useful to faith-buy more berserkers to conquer TAD/Kaiser faster or some trebs/bombards to hit ships from the land, but yeah if it doesn't work on ships that's not an overriding concern.
Yeah, hopefully I can get the walls at TAD's capital in 3 turns...I will probably only do 5 or so damage per shot though. With the frigate inside it will also kill one frigate per turn while I do so, which is pretty pricey. I am considering just bypassing it for now and going for the other TAD cities first while I mass some more frigates... As for Kaiser, you are right about the fogged cities...my best guess is that the western one is his capital due to the high district count, which is good since it appears to at least be coastal. If we can get the capital and the canal city and some more of TAD's cities, I think we'd be favored to flip the inland one. I am actually very interested in what the loyalty will look like at Fort Lakton once you take the other two TAD cities this turn...with only one Kaiser city in range and him in a dark age, I bet it will be start loyalty pretty quickly, unless I'm misunderstanding the alliance mechanic in such a way that TAD's cities will help him out here.
T143-Vikings
Two new cities and I found where Steam Power is located... Spent a huge chuck of my gold on 2 shipyards and a workshop. We will know where Industrialization is located in 3 turns. I could find out where it is located next turn because Official Visit came with a IZ but the workshop would be under occupation and I won't get the full benefit. Better to wait 3 turns.
Thank you Woden!!
 You were right and I was wrong...by staying and fighting, Kaiser has probably doomed most of his frigates to my LoB ones, which even CMF's caravels in the full flush of their obnoxiousness cannot block us from hitting. Taking a closer look now... Oh yeah, did you figure out if you were getting a boost on the TR pillages from Raid? I got something like 250 gold each IIRC. |