[SPOILERS] Chevalier Mal Fet and Marcopolothefraud lead a Soviet Down Under

[roland of gilead]

I think Sub and Bruindane will be ok. TBH i don't know much about there current set up. Obviously i know about lay of land.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I don't think you can hurt them much - as you will see we'd pretty much accomplished our goals there ages ago, and will be pretty comfortably able to frustrate any of their attempts to influence the game from this point, so you knowing their geography or their intentions won't make much of a difference.


As suits my role as Chief of Staff,, I shall put together a summary of our basic strategy and intentions, the game thus far, and a rough overview of Australia to give you a precis to move forward on.

[roland of gilead]

Got the turn now. going to read up from the place you suggested before playing.

I will load the turn in a bit and look around but not play until i am caught up.

[williams482]

Sounds like Bruidane won't be able to play his turn for a while anyway, so take your time.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Team & Australia Overview

I. Basic strategy

Our initial thought was to take an excellent research civ to drive us through the tech tree and pair it with a strong naval civ to muscle everyone else aside. we also talked about just taking two naval civs or two strongest civs available, but wanted to go hybrid. Australia was chosen first since it seemed like the strongest overall choice - coastal bonuses, extremely easy and powerful research, and an easy production bonus made it very-user friendly and excellent for a naval map. When Indonesia, Phoenicia, and Norway went in rapid succession thereafter I decided to take what I thought was the best remaining civ, even though it had no particular naval advantage: Russia. 

The plan then was to play to each civ's strengths - settle Australia in lush coastal spots and have Russia take the hinterlands, maybe partnering off science/culture, and just work on an overall strong game without thinking about cute synergies too much. That seemed more reliable to me than trying something too interconnected. 

II. Brief recap

A. Ancient Era

In the ancient era, we had it fairly easy apart from some barbarians here and there - the biggest issue was the appalling terrain around the island, with large amounts of tundra and desert really limiting viable settlements. I opted to make a virtue of necessity - this was shortly after the Work Ethic change and it looked to me like it had game-breaking potential. Russia can make tundra viable with faith and production bonuses, and TBS was kind enough to scatter lots of seafood around my multifarious lakes, so after a bit of flirting with OLORAM (look at how many marshes at Borodino!), I opted for Dance of the Aurora, accepting the longer snow-ball time, figuring I'd get my lavras down as quick as I could (it took us a while to find our natural wonder out in the eastern desert for Astrology) and try to snowball Monumentality from there. 

For marco's part, he moved his capital on the first turn because he was nervous about too many sea tiles, giving him a weaker start overall, and then compounded the error by opening with low RoI campuses and monuments. It took ages for me to persuade him to get builders out to start improving his terrain, he was allergic to gold improvements and so was perpetually bankrupt, and didn't really want to settle aggressively either. The biggest miscue was his pantheon. I wanted him to also leverage Work Ethic, since it's a follower belief - he could build high-adjacency holy sites thanks to Australia's ability and pair it with Desert Folklore and turn the vast unproductive deserts he had out east into extremely productive terrain. For example, at his city of MBDTF, he could plant a holy site with something like 18 base adjacency from the deserts, the natural wonder, the mountains, and the appeal, which would be doubled vai scripture into 36 production from the holy site alone, totally leaving aside population and card bonuses - and there was space for 2-3 more holy sites around that same wonder! If he could liberate a CS or if anyone attacked us that one single holy site would have been clocking 72 production per turn, which meant he would have been hitting 100ish production in a single city 100 turns into the game. Marco rejected that for reasons I'm still not quite clear on and opted for the military unit-boosting pantheon so he could build galleys faster. I think it was the most crushing blow to our game, but whatever, old news now. 

Anyway, Marco did improve on his early mistakes, started pushing out settlers, and began to slowly catch up to Russia. I had hit monumentality (needed to declare war on the Raider team to get the last point of era score) and was pulling in about 50ish faith per turn, but every new city would drop down a +5/6 adjacency lavra right away, which upon completion would double into another +10/12/14 faith, plus the faith from pop working tundra tiles (which...all my new cities had basically exclusively tundra tiles), which compounded into a snowball letting me get out new settlers every 3-4 turns from faith alone while my Work Ethic cities worked on basic infrastructure. I hit 10 cities while most other players were on 5, got out my early galley fleet, and began - a little late, because I'd needed to get the lavra infra up first - to eat the local city states. That brought me into conflict with Team Sandbox. 

B. Medieval Era - the Jong invasion

I tried to not get shut out of colonization entirely, taking the central city-state and getting an early colony overseas, but then I found Mercenaries on the tech tree frighteningly close and realized we'd be seeing jongs hit the water around turn 100, while we'd have nothing capable of stopping them short of frigates or caravels, which could be anywhere. Marco was belatedly digging himself out of the early hole and was getting himself turned around, posting enthusiastically in the thread, following advice, coming up with ideas of his own - we'd lost out on Desert Folklore but MBDTF, even if it was only half as good as it could have bene, was still a great city, and once he had his own high-adjacency holy sites up he'd be as productive as Russia, with better research besides. But I thought hte grave risk of jong attack meant we had to halt expansion and infrastructure and urgently come up with a solution. 

Basically, I thought our only real shot was to exploit the tech tree - sub would get early jongs, yes, but he wouldn't have access to open water yet. He'd need to stick to coastal waters. We couldn't beat jongs in open battle, BUT enough galleys attacking a jong could sink it, and we could build the little bastards at a rate of 1-2 every single turn. So I hunted around for chokepoints to slow the Indonesians down at pulled my own fleet back from the exposed colonies, and started spamming as many galleys as we could hammer together. I kept a close eye on sub's research progress and gold and milpower, and I left a pin in the map as a legacy of my scouting, where I predicted the exact time and place his jongs would appear. 

Anyway, the war went about as well as I could have expected, although not as well as I'd hoped. Sub attacked us since we were top of the leaderboard, and unfortunately went for marco instead of me. We had no good chokepoint to really stop him, and he eventually ground through our galleys once he started getting promotions on his jongs, which let him one-shot galleys. Marco, I don't think, was ever really on board with the Zapp Brannigan defense and sometimes diverted production to other projects, and making matters worse, once Sub burnt his first city he was able to split our defense forces and move away from my fleet, neutralizing a lot of our milpower. 

THe saving grace was Square Rigging coming up early and Russia having the best research in the game. I saved up all the gold I could (Australia still unfortunately bankrupt) and was able to scrape together 5 frigates barely 10 turns after the jongs hit us. Then I had to run down the jongs, which moved faster than my frigates. I could only catch them because they needed time to attack cities and time to shoot units - each time sub paused to do that I got my defenders closer. Then I managed to get cartography, cut the corner, and at last catch up and sink the buggers. 

Australia has been mostly recovering since hten. Marco largely stopped posting after he lost 3 cities burned and another captured, but with the doubled production I thought he could recover okay. I suggested several good candidate sites for resettlement and wanted him to go full settler spam while I handled the war myself, but he brushed me off and I dropped the topic. I tried hard to include him and keep him having fun, the primary purpose of the game, but obviously I failed, especially as the turn pace lagged in May and I got very frustrated as I knew I had a hard deadline coming up. 

C. Renaissance - counter-invasion

After the jongs were sunk, I spent a few turns repositioning my fleet and building out fresh forces - I had been building basically nothing but ships for twenty turns and I, uh, wasn't stopping, apart from slipping in a few necessary buildings here and there. I hit the main island of Sakhalin to draw sub's attention a few turns before my second fleet of frigates and caravels was ready to hit the city-state and regain my colonies. Sub rejected a white peace, so I went ahead and seized both. 

My spare galleys I scattered around, raiding and pillaging and scouting, mostly because I hadn't explored China's coast at all and needed to know the lay of hte land, and because I hate leaving military units idle when they could be causing headaches for someone. I signed a military alliance with marco for the strength boost, landed the Great Lighthouse at a Work Ethic tundra city for a movement bus, and faith-purchased a great admiral to further stack movement and strength, plus Oligarchic Legacy and Wars of Religion. On the whole, I think I did a good job diverting sub's attention from my next targets and kept him dancing to my tune. 

With my two cities recaptured, I leveraged my massive faith income by building the Grand Master's Chapel and have been basically getting land units for free all around the empire. That let us quickly pray up an army from the two captured cities and I started a land campaign to pry the central island away from sub, since there seemed little else to do with the faith - since then we realized what an effective tactic raiding could be and we started hoarding the faith to do the same thing to the raiders. 

Initially, I planned to go straight north from there and hit Sub's capital to force him to end this idiotic war that he started, but then I remembered what he had done to us at Rodeo and what a defensive headache that caused, so I altered my plans and thought I'd go for the exposed Chinese city of Borna Barasic instead. That would split the Chinese/Indonesian defenders and let me pick my side to hit and is the same tactic I think we should use against the Raiders. Anyway, Barasic fell easily enough, and I found the main Sandbox defense fleet anchored outside Call Me Al. I hit it right away, with every ship I could scrape up, and due to all my strength stacking (and constant shipbuilding, which still hadn't halted) I was able to sink both navies. From there it was mop up. 

Since then, williams took over, and our plan has basically been neutralizing the threat that Sandbox posed to us (sub rejected two more offers of peace, having for reasons opaque to me decided on war to the knife even as he's gotten his own ass kicked). They settled lots of their cities inland, shooting themselves in the foot, since those cities couldn't produce ships for the war that mattered, but it does make it a bit more irritating to outright eradicate them. Rather than sink resources into capturing more marginal cities, then, we decided we'd rather just burn out the coasts and leave them to rot on their island. Meanwhile, we've begun diverting everything we can spare to ready a decisive showdown with the raiders. 

III. Australia

A. Assets

For all marco's newb mistakes, he did a pretty good job learning nad growing and Australia is a solid civilization, I think from my eye test (remember, I haven't been in the save since May) about equal to Phoenicia, a bit behind Norway and way behind Russia. He should have about 8 cities, each one productive and growing. Australian research is middle of the pack, faith income is small by Russian standards but pretty sizeable, and you have access to Work Ethic and severla productive cities. Considering he lost 4 cities for a significant fraction of the game, he's bounced back in excellent shape. 

In the central core, you have Ilmatic, the Blueprint, The College Dropout, and Rodeo (II) (did he refound the desert city east of Ilmatic? Can't recall). Ilmatic is weak for a capital but a good shipbuilding city, the Blueprint is a great city but sadly not a shipbuilder since Marco rejected my suggestion of a third-ring harbor and went with a commercial hub instead. TCD and Rodeo are shipbuilders, and all 4 have access to Work Ethic holy sites. 

In the east, there's a few younger desert cities. The jewel is My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, which has the best holy site in the game, and then Scum F*** Flower Boy is a niter and industrial center. Especially from the Blueprint and MBDTF you should have the production to build anything needful. 

The Australian navy is large, second only to the Russian, but I have no idea where it's deployed. We were trying to interfere and slow up the raider's conquest of Japan and England, and I think did a decent job. Norway reaped massive pillage rewards and caught up from a very slow start. There are many city-states around for liberation to give productive shots in the arm, and you should always work with williams to seize those opportunities. 

B. Liabilities

Australia has a small amount of cities, not just because of sub's unprovoked invasion, but also marco's active choice to reject expansion. I disagreed at the time with that move and still do, but it's too late to fix now. The geography of Australia splits your shipbuilding up into a few theaters - the east, with SFFB and MBDTF, supported by a quartet of Russian shipyards, directly faces the former Central Powers homeland. The north is Ilmatic and maybe 1-2 other cities, divided by a narrow channel and the presence of Japan from the eastern yards, and the two western cities face most of the Russian yards in a sea just south of Sakhalin. Most of your ships I think must go north and east. 

Phoenicia builds ships just as fast as Australia even with the x2 bonus and he has more gold and more harbors to do it from. Most of Australia is rightfully coastal, but it does leave you open to Norwegian raids - and Woden has learned from his classical age blunders and won't neglect the chance to pillage and burn again. 

Research is out of date - Australia has solid rates but is behind in total research due to the slow start and Indonesia's attack. Russia has inspired most of the important techs but you are a long way from ironclads, let alone Steel. 

I have no idea what marco is researching, what he is building, or what his deployments are. 

C. Recommendations

Our main idea to win the game has always been to win control of the seas and then to defeat each team individually. We successfully accomplished that against Sandbox, and the raiders all-but eliminated the Central Powers for us, leaving only a showdown with the Raiders. We are ahead of them in tech and have larger militaries, but if they can get their conquests online and fully productive they will eventually catch us and outproduce us through their civ abilities. Accordingly, we believe it is best ot hit them as soon as our alliance expires and attempt to win a decisive naval battle now, then blockade and choke them out until they surrender. 

Russia's role is to attack from the east to the west, near Norway. There are two objectives:

1)First and most important is sinking and burning ships. If we sink all their ships and capture no cities, we will ultimately win and capture the cities later.
2)Capture at least one city on the mainland (OR just land many land troops on it) and pillage out their interior. 

These two objectives will collapse their ability to produce and research and eventually win us the game. 

I must go now so I'll write up Australia's role in a few hours!

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Australian strategy

I. Strategy

Australia should have an offensive strategy. We are on the attack on all fronts. Russia's thrust is the main effort and will most likely be decisive, with Australia supporting however it can. Oz must put pressure on Phoenicia and Norway to prevent them from reinforcing the front against Russia. The main vulnerability to threaten is the Norwegian conquest empire - losing that to Australia would effectively end their chances, since both Russia and Australia would be far larger than them at that point and they'd have no prospects of equalizing. Therefore, Phoenicia MUST defend those cities.

You have two main theaters, northern and southern. Northern Japan has the Mato Tipila island and some narrow waters followed by an open archipelago all the way to Phoenicia. I believe most of the Australian fleet is deployed here, defending the Japanese remnants from Norse-Punic conquest. Most of Australia's shipyards open onto this theater. The southern theater is divided from the north by the narrow strait near Marshal Mathers LP/Fort Milne, and is mostly a broad channel to England, where it becomes an archipelago. SFFB, MBDTF, and 4 Russian shipyards supply this theater. 

Personally, my own inclination is to take the offensive in the southern theater, since you can seal off most of the Phoenician fleet on the far side of the strait, and if ljubljana attacks your home cities, then you can take him between your two fleets. It's also a more open area to operate in with lots of vulnerable cities and will be more difficult for them to defend. The northern Japanese/English cities are years away from anything important, the southern ones point straight at Fuji Bay and its vital ship production. If they fight you, great, mission accomplished - those ships aren't fighting Russia. If not, great, take the cities and they'll be rapidly losing their chances. 

Above all, never never never stop building ships. 

II. Tactics

There is exactly one rule of naval warfare in Civ VI: he who strikes first, wins. 

Ljubljana goes first and has the advantage of turn order. Before turn 168, you must move your ships out of range of his. I'd shift them south, so you can execute an attack through southern Japan/England. 

Otherwise, it's simple. Keep your ships en masse at all times, don't send out penny-packets to get picked off unless you're very confident (I can link some posts in this thread that go more into detail on when and how to divide ships), and try and hammer ships before cities. Don't get first struck, DO strike him first, that's all there is to it. Whenever you hit anything, go in with overwhelming force so you can win. 

III. Research

As far as research goes, I think really the only option is to try and modernize Australia's military. Industrialization especially to hook up those coal resources is vital, and from there Steel will lock down conquest attempts prior to battleships. Similarly, Nationalism for fleets is fairly important, although I think two frigates beats a frigate fleet personally (fleets/corps are better for sieges and constricted terrain). So we regrettably can't diversify research to try and share some needed boosts. 

That said, I have no idea what techs marco has completed nor what he's researching. Mercantilism should be boosted and I BELIEVE gives outback stations, which would be a welcome boost to some of the Australian cities - the Blueprint can supply builders since it can't build ships. 

I think that's all the useful advice I have to offer. Good luck. We're all counting on you to pull out a win for the good guys here!

[roland of gilead]

i am catching up guys.

will put some thoughts together soon.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Let me know what questions you have, and i'll do my best to help you get oriented. I probably know Australia best out of any of the remaining people on this forum, but it's still a largely black box to me.

[Sullla]

Chevalier, please do not blame yourself for anything that happened with marco. You've been unbelievably generous throughout this game in discussing plans, making suggestions, and providing support to the Australian civ in a way that was not returned at all. Seriously, marco was a TERRIBLE teammate, one of the worst that I've ever seen in any cooperative MP game at Realms Beyond. He paid no attention to discussions in the team thread, routinely ignored decisions that the two of you had previously agreed upon, rejected good strategic advice in favor of seemingly random spur-of-the-moment antics, and then disappeared without telling anyone. If any of the other 7 players in this game had been running the Australian civ, this game would have been called in your team's favor a long time ago.

Anyway, best of luck and good to see things moving again.

[roland of gilead]

Let me know what questions you have, and i'll do my best to help you get oriented. I probably know Australia best out of any of the remaining people on this forum, but it's still a largely black box to me.

i will post some screen shots and look at your post with the game open so i can get some questions posted. 

really appreciate your input CMF and hope i can do your team justice here as it's clear you have done very well so far.