Hey all, sorry for the lack of reporting lately. I am working on getting us up to date for the last 6 turns, but first a bit of foreshadowing.
The Warning
On Friday, I played T152 quite early in the day and wrapped the turn. It wasn't until later in the day that I had this weird wave of anxiety hit me, and had a pressing need to check the game immediately. The problem was that 4 hours had passed, and I was sure that Commodore would have completed his part of the turn by that point. To my pleasant surprise he had not yet done so, and I was able to go in and make a quick fix to what had been bothering me.
15 minutes after I closed out, Commodore did indeed play the turn. Had my instincts kicked in just a few minutes later, I'd have been locked out of any chance of rectifying the tactical error I had made and would be sweating things out until I had a crack at the current turn.
There's a pretty big hint to what I am alluding to in the text above, which should be pretty apparent to anyone that knows their RB history. But I am going to get to work on that report now, so as not to keep you all in suspense. Stay tuned......!
If you'll recall from T146, I was waiting to see if Commodore had a response from my Caravel upgrade in the Inner Sea. It turns out that he has researched Optics as well and was able to retreat to complete some upgrades of his own. I responded by upgrading my remaining 3 ships in the region, as well as two more in the mega-stack standoff near Loyang.
A closer look at this screenshot will reveal that the city of Dairen is no more, with Commodore having boated the city with a Praet. As i happens, I was able to remove that slight threat with an XBow that I had sent to defend the now-lost city. The sad part is that I could have had the XBow in place this turn had I promoted this HE unit to Guerilla II. At Size 1, losing it may have helped our city maintenance however. We can rebuild at a later time once this area is a bit safer.
South Sea
In this region, Commodore did not take the bait and landed two units to attack Crabisland. The odds are against us keeping this city, which means Commodore would have a direct shot at the Chariot-guarded CrabCity if he chose to not raze.
Commodore's boldness here forced me to reconsider that extra turn of gpt, and I decided we could no longer wait for a mobilization period. I had to emphasize some non-lighthouse coastal tiles for us to claim Feudalism in 1 turn at 80% instead of 90%, which freed up the gold for me to upgrade those ships. This would leave us cash poor to upgrade any additional units next turn.
Superdeath
Our Incan rival had a unit near Commodore's city of Dogman, and was tipped off by Commodore's reactionary upgrades allowing him to move his Triremes to safety. So we have some relief there, plus I rather they remain at full strength for Commodore. I'll also kill the suspense in regards to this region -- the Tri's are still safely of out reach and we are still in a stand off at Incense City through T152. I figure a slow buildup strategy favors us here, especially if we are able to hold out until Engineering. Problem is there is a tech that I am much more interested in first....
Feudalism is discovered! I finished all of our Worker turns before revolting into Vassalage/Slavery. Here's a look at the available tech:
I decided to go with Guilds next. The Knights will make the difference in the Incense City region as it will net us better odds on all of the Cat flanking we need to do there. Plus, the Level 5 units we produce out of Nanking can be C3 Amphibious Knights! A plan is starting to develop here, but I figured I would open with this fine looking queue.
Yeah, I am not messing around. I ended up whipping 17 Caravels, spread evenly across our 3 hot spots. The distribution was 6/6/5, with the South Sea drawing the short straw. Also whipped 4 Horse Archers and temporarily removed specialists from all GP cities to allow for quicker pop recovery (I ended up restoring them 2 turns later after realizing it was foolish to not take advantage of the GA boost even though I will be delaying our next GAs for a short time. I'll have full details of that in its own post once I am caught up here).
Aside from that, a relatively slow turn tactically. At some point, SD started defending Incense City with Longbows and Commodore has them now as well. It's another reason I am rushing to Guilds, now that I know they have the means of discovering it.
Crabisland fell this turn (5.6 Praet v. 2.8 WE), and Commodore decided to keep the city. We would not have been able to whip in time since Commodore plays after us.
The only other real skirmish was in Grassman Bay. Commodore flexed 2 new Caravels in the region against the 3 we had upgraded in T148. I had a +1 Combat advantage on each, which made it 50/50 odds when you factor in his coastal defense. My thought was I have 50/50 odds to win at least one of these 50/50 battles and still be able to clean up with the third Caravel.
I ended up winning both, and then covering them with the remaining Caravel and a fresh unit out from Chengdu. With more racing forward and a few more queued, things were looking up in the Inner Sea! And with Slavery available again, we should be able to stay ahead of any specific threats should they arise.
That last sentence is a setup, as I am fading fast in the sleep department. I mean, the aforementioned anxiety has got to set in at some point, right? I'll make sure I get this story caught up tomorrow, especially since it coincides with the last turn of our current Golden Age and there is so much more to discuss.
(August 14th, 2021, 23:46)Donovan Zoi Wrote: The Warning
Reverent finds Donovan’s title Ominous.
Looking forward to seeing the rest of the report!
Hi Reverent,
Thanks for checking in! Ok, so here goes nothin'
Turn 150
I opened this turn as I have since I took over for TBS, with a cursory check of my 4 main theatres:
--SD still hanging in the backlines at Incense City. Check.
--2:1 Caravel ratio nearly in place at South Sea. Check.
--Inner Sea boats also near 2:1 and preparing to launch an offensive. Check.
--North Sea ships....?
Um, wtf?
Yeah, ouch. What you are not seeing in this screenshot are the (only) two Triremes that sputtered back to safety in Shanghai at 0.8/2. 17 other ships were lost by us this turn, though Commodore also sacrificed 10 of his own ships to make this happen. So losing 17 to 10 is really not too bad in this situation, but countering 16 ships even while injured was still going to be a tall order for the new C1 Caravels I have been producing nearby. Also I had only wanted to devote two turns of whips to ships in this area so I could move onto Knights soon, but this oversight will merit us creating a few more here.
I was also aware that Comm was hiding at least 4 Caravel in the fogged tile NE of Tianjin, but still didn't think our stack was as vulnerable as was proven here. Doing the math, Commodore had brought 26 ships (7 Caravels hidden in the fog) against my 19 ships, of which only 2 were Caravels IIRC. And once the first few ships do their job, it turns out that Galleys can take out Tri's pretty easily on my decks start taking in water.
In the end, I really wasn't surprised by this move, as I had chosen to favor other naval fronts to this one. I had considered upgrading more units here but didn't. I had considered moving 1 tile SW to avoid a strike from those hidden ships, and chose to ignore that internal advice as well.
Despite this major setback, I was still mildly comforted by the following:
--we saved about 800g in eventual upgrade costs while still giving Commodore some losses as well. I looked at this at just a reset of our standoff with us only bringing Caravels to the fight going forward.
--This battle netted us a new GG, which I am going to use to promote 4 Galleys to Nav I in the Inner Sea. This will allow those ships to run with our rock solid Caravel stack (15 to 7) for transport of Amphibious Knights, and put off the need for Astro for awhile. As it turns out, Astro on its own doesn't help us since CtH also requires the knowledge of Paper to create Galleons (and we are still missing the prereqs of Civil Service and Theology to even get that tech).
--Ships, ships and mores ships is all I've seen from Rome except for the new Longbows that are starting to present themselves via new builds or upgrades. This hopefully means we will encounter minimal resistance when we start to fight on land though LBs are still a pretty strong unit to reckon with. I may have to sim to see how our Knights will match up.
--Lastly, it allows me a look at the units he had been hiding in these Galleys, since he had to drop them off to avoid the risk of losing them in those last crucial battles. Without the engagement of those Galleys, I would have been able to retreat more ships to Shanghai to restore.
2 Praets and some Chariots and Axes. And Commodore does only have 4 Galleys remaining, for whatever that is worth.
Here's a look at most of our city builds this turn, and you'll see that I've ordered up 11 more Caravels for T151. Also slowly generating HA's in preparation for Engineering and Guilds. Upgrading and whipping Knights is going to go a bit more slowly, so it will also give some cities more time to recover pop while still being able to 2-whip them. I am going to try to avoid 3-whipping a Knight unless the situation is dire enough to require it. And I don't see that being an issue at this point. We've lost a huge battle here, but I still think we have a great chance at prevailing in both wars without whipping all cities to Size 2.
For whatever calamity happened in the north last turn, the situation in our south became all of the better for it. Commodore ended up bring his 4 newly upgraded Caravels through CrabIsland to meet 3 of mine, perhaps not knowing that I had 8 total of my own nearby to counter. So what started off looking like this...
Now looked like this.
Well, hello civac and Tarkeel (again)! How are you enjoying the show?
So our defensive objectives here are nearly complete, and we got 4 new promos to boot! At first glance, we now outnumber Rome 10-1 in ships here, so soon I'll be sending some of those toward SD though I am not ready to do so just yet. This is because I have started preparation for the push south to the Roman mainland, and will start by retaking CrabIsland before moving onto the island city of Champ and beyond. I have Galleys being built in both CrabCity and Capitol, along with 2 level 4 HAs staged just outside of CrabCity that will be our first test of C2 Amphibious Knights.
Inner Sea
Knowing he is outnumbered here, Commodore seems to be content with evading me via Macau's island because that landmass is too large for me to strike his 7 Caravels/1 Galley from either side. My ships are positioned a bit south of that island though, to remove any temptation of boating joshy's old mainland. And I am definitely not giving chase as I wait for 4 promotable Galleys to join our 16 Caravel stack --from there Rome can decide what to do with us as I attempt to bounce from one of his coastal cities to the next.
I'll make adjustments as needed, but I really like our chances of making some great strides here over the next 5-7 turns.
North Sea
The battle of T150 must have left a sting, because apparently I have not taken a screenshot here for the last two turns. So I will let you in on what happened.
T151 - Commodore chose to load up and advance his injured ships on our western coast near Loyang. I was able to position 5 C1 Caravels in a way that his Tris/Galleys could not advance along our western coat. However, I did recognize the the island city of Ningbo could be in danger so I upgraded an archer to a Longbow there.
T152 - At the outset of this turn, our 5 Caravels were gone and Comm's ships were down to 10. So 6 to 5 in our favor in this battle, but we are not out of the woods yet. And since I never learn, I have blocked this stack with 3 more Caravels that had just made their way to the front from further back. They are positioned so that Commodore will have to destroy them all to pass, which hasn't been an issue for him so far. But with minimal chance to heal and no chance to upgrade, we will hopefully be able to have enough to remove this threat in the next 2-3 turns.
There are also two more Caravels of Rome's working their way to the front, and I have 4 ships coming out of Shanghai soon once those 2 Triremes are healed and upgraded. These are going to be used to contain Roman ships from the north while I bring up just a few more reinforcements from the south (some via that 3rd wave of naval whips I was hoping to avoid). No troops have landed yet, however, so I still project that losing Ningbo is a possible but everything else should be fine, right?
Well, I thought so and was confident enough to end the turn. Until.....
For Reverent and those playing at home, yes the hint was indeed related to "The Warning," PAL's (People's Army of the Ladder) capital back in the Apolyton DemoGame of 2009. Which happened to be razed by yours truly via my own 1-man team to eventually force a concession from PAL and grant a victory for my ally Realms Beyond after some sniping by pretty much everyone involved. I have also had two other notable capital razes during my PB time here:
PB38: DarkSavant's capital via a Woody II Holkan which eliminated him from the game in T44.
PB44: Commodore's capital during a quite foolhardy Horcher romp that ended up with me eventually falling into a continuous unit strike due to lack of funds, and the consternation of everyone I shared a border with in that game.
In fact, the fallout was so awkward for me in PB44 that I reached out to Commodore via PM before signing up for this game, since he had already expressed interest. I've always had a lot of respect for him and would have bowed out if he objected, but he graciously gave me the green light to join. And he obviously had no objection to me taking over as an enemy here, so we seem to be good on a meta level again.
In-game though, not so much! Hence my noontime jitters that prompted me to reopen the turn. You see, I had forgotten to take into consideration that one of his Galleys may be promotable to NavI and could boat Beijing if that promo became available after the last battle AND could (very likely) mow trough my 3rd suppression stack to give that Galley free passage.
And our capital city of Beijing, which was 3 turns away from producing a likely Great Scientist, was currently being defended by a Warrior. With 2 Horcher's sitting just outside of it, presumably with lawn chairs. Had I learned nothing from PAL's fateful mistake 12 years prior, when they had a Cuirassier munching popcorn just outside of their flagship city??
Upon logging in I rechecked the area and, sure enough, Comm had a Galley with Flanking already in place. I moved 4 nearby HA's into Beijing and gave 2 of them C3 promos, leaving them at 17/17 to give them Amphibious before I upgrade them to Knights. I then closed the turn, and waited for Commodore to respond....a mere 15-20 minutes later. Whew?
We are not out of the woods yet, and it looks like able to play now to see where things stand. I am expecting either a city raze of Loyang (1 Cho Ku and 2 Cats defense) or a drop off at Ningbo's island to assault that city (1 LB, 1 Axe) this turn. Commodore still has some strength in numbers here though I have the better units. I'll let you all know how it goes.
And boy, what a way to go out. This is how the game introduced me last night.
Curious...we have 40% of the continent. HA's were still available in queue, so where are our 4 plots of Iron?
--Crabisland, held by Commodore (and not worked yet anyway)
--Just barely out of our culture via Incense City, held by SD
--Under a Cottage near Chongqing? Hmmm...
--And in....oh
So, in my list of scenarios, I didn't factor in Ningbo (along with its Iron) to be boated but it makes perfect sense based on everything Commodore has accomplished in this region to date. And now he gets to actually heal his ships in a former Chinese port after he upgraded any Triremes in that belligerent stack.
We match up at about 12-12 in this region, including the 4 ships I have in Shanghai. So this scuffle isn't ending anytime soon. Commodore did lose 4 units in the capture of Ningbo, so he's become less of a threat to the mainland for the moment. I've started a Galley in Loyang to 2-whip next turn to see if I can reclaim Ningbo, make that Albawitch.
There's a bit more to unpack in the above screenshot as well.
Engineering in 2
Losing access to Knights for 2 turns (we have 2 workers near Chongqing that can mine over the old village starting next turn) was quite the setback, but I am actually turning it into something positive. I would not have dreamed we would have this tech in 2 turns considering the loss of commerce after the GA. I had to load up on wealth builds to get us to that sweet spot between gpt and research, but it is going to help in so many ways
--The +1 road movement will practically make up for the lost two turns of military builds (though I did have to delay 5 Knights that were whipped last turn)
--Castles for an extra trade route (eventually, but soon)
--Pikes and Trebs, the latter of which I am looking forward to have join our SD stack. Another thing to add to the sim list.
I'm 99% certain we'll go CoL > Civil Service next. I'll have a post soon on how these tech choices will synergize with our next GA (which will likely happen between T168-172)
Initiation of Roman Land Game
With Commodore's activities contained in the west, I have evenly split the WEs/Axes/Cats stationed in Shanghai between protecting Loyang and approaching our jungle border we have with Commodore. There are about 6 units in the initial exploratory stack, and is a reaction to one Roman WE possibly headed to the same border. I'll follow these up with a few Knights once we have them, and see if this plan can help divert attention from the coastal plans I have going in the Inner Sea.
Speaking of the Inner Sea...
Ceremonial Preparation
The 4 Galleys are almost ready for their Nav I promotion ceremony near Chengdu, in celebration of the Great General "Great General" (we must have collectively exhausted the naming pool )The revelry will commence as soon as I have the appropriate units to man these brave vessels.
Taming the South
So far so good. I am slowing moving Caravels toward Champ to see what resistance I encounter. Only two Caravels north of town to my 9 so far. I may just hang back for now to keep Comm's Galley from reinforcing CrabIsland, but will send the south two boats scouting and back them up with the 4-stack if I have to do so.
