[SPOILERS] Woden and ljubljana like boats

[ljubljana]

hang on, no, I am wrong, those medieval walls are UNDER CONSTRUCTION at the capital (only +3 from wall defenses). What happens if I attack them? Can it continue to pour production into them until the city magically gets 100 more points of walls in 5 turns or whatever, or is it like repairing the walls where attacking makes them stop working on them?

also maybe I am wrong, I am just interpreting that graphic as indicating that wall upgrades are being built...maybe that's not actually correct?

[Woden]

If you can't hit the city from the tile SE of the campus, move your frigate. I will start bringing my ram up from the south and send over a few berserkers starting next turn. I can probably pillage to get Steam Power done in 3 turns (3 campus pillages and 2 mines). Steam Power adds +2 MP to embarked units, so it will be quicker but still take a bit. Maybe start bombarding Angiers and swap out frigates. Also, in 2 turns I will have a caravel in range to pillage teh camous and he might shoot at that unit. One good thing about CMF's caravel, he won't be able to attack out of the city.

If you attack his city while he is building Medieval walls, he can't building them anymore for 3 turns. If you hover over the city center, it will tell you what is in the city.

[ljubljana]

Okay, I will definitely move the frigate blocking the campus. As for the capital, I think I will fire at it with the one frigate that can hit it to stop it from making Medieval Walls if that's what it's doing. That way he can't attack out with the caravel and can only hit me with the city defensive fire, which I will just heal off since I am in promotion range.

Angiers I think we should ignore for now. I only have 3 frigates here, if I try to fire at both cities at once I will lose health too fast to keep it up. If I just hit Angiers, my frigate will die because the caravel can attack out. That leaves hitting just the capital as the thing I can keep up for longest. Angiers will just flip anyways once the capital is taken out...that might take 15 or 20 turns now, but at least this approach should make sure it happens eventually. I will also leave the GA up here to speed it up to the degree that I am able to. How does that sound?

Good news: no blocker at Fort Miln and I got a good amount of its health taken out with just two frigates. Marco has ships heading over to block but they are just barely too far away - I think you will beat them there and we can take the city.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Figures. Yeah we gotta ban this to the bottom circle of banlist hell with Nan Madol.

Won't post anything in about blockades in the main civ thread, until after the game, because of spoilers.

[Woden]

Okay, I will definitely move the frigate blocking the campus. As for the capital, I think I will fire at it with the one frigate that can hit it to stop it from making Medieval Walls if that's what it's doing. That way he can't attack out with the caravel and can only hit me with the city defensive fire, which I will just heal off since I am in promotion range.

Angiers I think we should ignore for now. I only have 3 frigates here, if I try to fire at both cities at once I will lose health too fast to keep it up. If I just hit Angiers, my frigate will die because the caravel can attack out. That leaves hitting just the capital as the thing I can keep up for longest. Angiers will just flip anyways once the capital is taken out...that might take 15 or 20 turns now, but at least this approach should make sure it happens eventually. I will also leave the GA up here to speed it up to the degree that I am able to. How does that sound?

Good news: no blocker at Fort Miln and I got a good amount of its health taken out with just two frigates. Marco has ships heading over to block but they are just barely too far away - I think you will beat them there and we can take the city.

Sounds like a plan!

[ljubljana]

ok, I can't finish the turn for a couple hours (unfortunately) but sounds good to me. This might tie down some of our frigates during the Russia war, though, which is scary, but it's better than just peacing out with Kaiser without taking his capital...I think? I'm pretty sure that's true at least...

edit: I wonder if Russia will make a detour for Cossacks? That could be tempting but will not help them make progress towards Industrialism, and I think we should be able to stop them from landing on our shores if they do. At least I hope so because 5 or 6 cossacks in a well-chosen spot on our coastline could do some real damage. Hopefully they try, though, since that's most likely to be a bad investment of both beakers and hammers with respect to actually beating us.

[ljubljana]

Turn 146 - Phoenicia

Yeahhh, compare and contrast these two cities:



That's definitely medieval walls going up at the capital. Where else are they going up? Why, Fort Miln, of course! Looks like we got here just in time. Fort Lakton, too, which I don't think we can do anything about really - any frigate that steps into firing range there will get shredded by the combination of city defensive fire and the Kaiser frigate trapped inside. We may just have to accept needing to chew through medieval walls at that city...at least when we finally get around to that we will have more than enough frigates in place to do so. Really, TAD and Kaiser could have done a lot more damage, maybe even stopped us cold, if they had put frigates in every city, mass-built medieval walls, and switched to Bastions. Kaiser is belatedly doing at least the latter two, but TAD has very fortunately not done so.

So here's the final southern deploy:



The main feature is a calculated risk that I am taking with the Golden Lion. If another Kaiser ship appears out of the fog, it might die, but we have all but one of his ships accounted for according to the milpower rankings so I decided getting that this extra shot in was worth the small chance of that happening. Next turn, I will hit the city with the maximum of 4 frigates (so please leave the relevant tiles open if you can), which should take out the walls.

Also, you see what I mean about marco not quite having ships in range to block you, unless that caravel impossibly has 7 movement like a TAD caravel. Unless some more ships appear out of the fog (which would be just about the worst and most frustrating thing ever) you should manage to occupy the tile next to the city center next turn.

edit: Actually, now that I think about it, we killed a Kaiser frigate last turn and his milpower didn't drop at all...my guess is that this means he produced a frigate/caravel somewhere last turn too - if so, the Golden Lion should be safe here. I don't really understand the details of how the milpower display works, though, so I definitely could be wrong on that.



In the north, the poor Elizabeth Bonaventure can't escape, so she hides instead, hoping that TAD will not poke his frigate's head out of the city and destroy her. On the other hand, it's not actually a bad deal for us if he does do that...I'm pretty confident that frigate is at its most threatening when inside the city and it would be great to get rid of it. Next turn I will move up all six frigates that you see here and start shelling Open Government, if CMF permits it...and even if he blocks us, I'm sure your two berserkers will be able to take the city if they need to.



Cuneiform finishes its shipyard next turn, yay! It will do a 4-turn workshop after that, then ships for the rest of forever unless we decide I need a wonder for era score or a campus when it hits size 13. I am getting closer to done with the traders now, and Mitla becomes the first city to go back to ships. Hieratic will follow after its campus (at which point I will buy the library there). That city is shamefully working both an unimproved grass and plains tile right now, and actually needs the grass to not starve back down to size 6 since it has no Cuneiform TR... As for the rest of the cities: 

- Demotic will make all the rest of the traders one at a time after this aqueduct, maybe pausing for a granary but also maybe not
- Abugida's going lighthouse-ships, and Abjad's going trader-lighthouse-ships
- Linear A, Linear B, and Abugida are about to pause for +6 IZs (+7 for Linear A) and then will do more ships
- Runic sucks horribly but did place a discounted +3 campus so it'll do that after the lighthouse
- Oracle Bones needs a builder in the worst way but then will make what ships it can
- I couldn't resist the shipyard at Geneva, due in 15, but then it will go granary (new Pingala city) - ships

You can also see that I have a bunch of quads hanging out at Linear A/Linear B - please send me your Niter next turn so I can swap to Retinues and upgrade them all. If any lurker would like to chime in to tell me that I am violating the spirit of the game by making frigates this way...well, now would be a good time to do so, because otherwise I am going to do it 6 more times over the next two turns...

[Woden]

You can also see that I have a bunch of quads hanging out at Linear A/Linear B - please send me your Niter next turn so I can swap to Retinues and upgrade them all. If any lurker would like to chime in to tell me that I am violating the spirit of the game by making frigates this way...well, now would be a good time to do so, because otherwise I am going to do it 6 more times over the next two turns...

You can continue to build quads and I will supply you with my niter. In about 6 or so turns turns, I will need some to upgrade some bombards and my remaining quads. I am going to send them over to Kaiser's southern holding and send the ram to the north. I am going to focus on caravels since I get the +50% production on melee ships only, while you get it on all ships. In a few turns, I will have the 2nd niter hooked up at Official Visits and will get a 5th niter once we take Fort Miln. I know you suggested taking Fort Miln but with his capital being harder to conquer, I think it is too close for you to control. I think I am going to at least place a Governor in the city and still not sure I will be able to keep it loyal.

[ljubljana]

Oh I only suggested that I take Fort Miln because I thought your caravels would be blocked. If you can take it, by all means please do! I actually don't think the loyalty will be as bad for you as you think though - there are only two Kaiser cities in range and Angiers is quite far away, plus there is the age disparity. I predict the situation will be about as bad as The Compassionate Society was initially, and perhaps somewhat better than that even.

For shipbuilding, I will need some caravels at first as they are my strongest unit with policy cards in place and I need shielding for any ranged units I make. But I am also still considering swapping to Letters of Marque and spamming out privateers in +250% hammers. Privateers seem pretty crappy, but they don't require niter so it could be worth it.

I am beginning to wonder if I should sacrifice a frigate by firing on Angiers in the hopes of drawing out that caravel...it is worth 10 defensive strength sitting in the capital which is hugely significant... I hate losing or wasting frigates for any reason, but this could be justified unfortunately. Also, since the capital is on a hill, I wonder if we can fire on it from the north over that lumbermill...might be worth sending frigates over there once TAD is dead (which, sadly, I think will happen before we can crack the capital...)

edit: Also, I might ask for some more gold in a few turns so I can "build libraries" lol. I might start being a financial drain on you in addition to a drain on your niter supply, because we are reaching the point where I can average one frigate upgrade per turn! Which is great and definitely worth doing IMO, but it does also costs more than my available income... Once you need to start saving for ironclads I will stop doing that, though, and will start hard-building them, which is not quite as fun, but we should have enough niter for it soon.

edit2: I don't know if I should be firing on the capital every turn. Here is the situation - I have only 3 frigates over there, and one is about to promote-heal off the damage (the one that just fired), but the other two won't quite get there I think. That means I have 4 shots in total with that group of ships before I start losing frigates. I think I am going to have to bring over more frigates to eventually crack the city. That means the frigates in the west, but they have to take Fort Miln and burn the TAD CS before they can help out here, which will take 8-10 turns most likely. That means the primary purpose of the ships at the capital is to keep it from finishing medieval walls, not threaten to take the city which they can't really do anyways. To maximize the length of time that I am able to do that, perhaps I should only fire on the capital every 2-3 turns. Would every 3 turns work to lock it out of medieval walls, or do I need to go to every 2 turns?

[Woden]

Oh I only suggested that I take Fort Miln because I thought your caravels would be blocked. If you can take it, by all means please do! I actually don't think the loyalty will be as bad for you as you think though - there are only two Kaiser cities in range and Angiers is quite far away, plus there is the age disparity. I predict the situation will be about as bad as The Compassionate Society was initially, and perhaps somewhat better than that even.

Good, let's plan on me taking Fort Miln. It will also give me a base to faith buy some berserkers. My plan is to bring my ram up there. If we see Medieval walls going up at Angiers, we may want to hit it with a frigate just to stop their construction. Otheriwse, the ram won't work there.

For shipbuilding, I will need some caravels at first as they are my strongest unit with policy cards in place and I need shielding for any ranged units I make. But I am also still considering swapping to Letters of Marque and spamming out privateers in +250% hammers. Privateers seem pretty crappy, but they don't require niter so it could be worth it.

A couple of Privateers are good, to boost Electricity but they do cost more than a Frigate but not as strong. But also, you can pillage with them, so will probably want some.

I am beginning to wonder if I should sacrifice a frigate by firing on Angiers in the hopes of drawing out that caravel...it is worth 10 defensive strength sitting in the capital which is hugely significant... I hate losing or wasting frigates for any reason, but this could be justified unfortunately. Also, since the capital is on a hill, I wonder if we can fire on it from the north over that lumbermill...might be worth sending frigates over there once TAD is dead (which, sadly, I think will happen before we can crack the capital...)

Might work, amybe wait until we see Medieval walls being started in Angiers

edit: Also, I might ask for some more gold in a few turns so I can "build libraries" lol. I might start being a financial drain on you in addition to a drain on your niter supply, because we are reaching the point where I can average one frigate upgrade per turn! Which is great and definitely worth doing IMO, but it does also costs more than my available income... Once you need to start saving for ironclads I will stop doing that, though, and will start hard-building them, which is not quite as fun, but we should have enough niter for it soon.

I will sent you gold, send me a deal.

edit2: I don't know if I should be firing on the capital every turn. Here is the situation - I have only 3 frigates over there, and one is about to promote-heal off the damage (the one that just fired), but the other two won't quite get there I think. That means I have 4 shots in total with that group of ships before I start losing frigates. I think I am going to have to bring over more frigates to eventually crack the city. That means the frigates in the west, but they have to take Fort Miln and burn the TAD CS before they can help out here, which will take 8-10 turns most likely. That means the primary purpose of the ships at the capital is to keep it from finishing medieval walls, not threaten to take the city which they can't really do anyways. To maximize the length of time that I am able to do that, perhaps I should only fire on the capital every 2-3 turns. Would every 3 turns work to lock it out of medieval walls, or do I need to go to every 2 turns?

I will have a ram up there is probably 5 turns. Next turn, I will pillage to finish Seige Tactics and set up the next turns pillaging, where I should get 4 science pillages that might finish Steam Power and give me +2 MP for embarked units. Then, it shouldn't take too long to get the ram up north. Plan will be to take out the walls at Angiers to protect your frigates from cross fire, then pillage everything before taking the actual city. That should open you up for at least another shot on his capital. The ram will then sail over to his capital and help take out the walls there. I am also bring over the 2 turnbuckles from my mainland to Kaiser's southern island to be upgraded to bombrads and attack his city. I could divert them north if we are having troubles with his capital.