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

[roland of gilead]

Screenshot dump for discussion. I seem to be guarding japan for some reason.

[civac2]

That's a good amount of ships. Were they made with the double production ability, given you don't have many cities? How many do you have anyway, 6?

[roland of gilead]

7 CITIES Not sure when they were made

[williams482]

Good stuff, especially the tech tree. Those ships near Japan were attempting to prevent pillages and captures, by Norway, but clearly the time for that has passed and they should come home for the upcoming war with the Raiders.

Tech wise, the unrevealed Industrial era tech is Military Science, which should hopefully be boosted for you after Russia's t170 or t171. I'm frankly lost as to why Marco thought that chasing Rifling -> Ballistics (which he couldn't have identified at the time) was a good decision; if I'd been consulted I would have said that we could really use the Gunpowder boost (much too late now though) and that Industrialization for coal and better mines was the most important target. Now that you're two turns away I suppose you may as well finish Ballistics and see what lies behind it, but I doubt very much that field cannons or cuirassiers will be critical units in the coming turns.

Good to see that melee class units will be nerfed for 30 turns. Boosting Theater square buildings is exactly the right kind of useless for our purposes, improving city centers (for walls) or encampments (for the Raiders to find Fascism faster) would have been genuinely inconvenient.

Looks like gold remains a major problem in Australia, which is extra unfortunate because that's an easily pooled resource. Russia has a lot right now, but we're also likely to be doing a bunch of upgrades while running a substantial deficit. Certainly those crossbows won't be turned into field cannons any time soon. If there's anything you can do to improve gold generation without hurting your military prowess, do it.

I'm in full agreement with what Chevalier has to say about tactics and strategy for the upcoming war. Simplifying things further, here are your priorities:
1) Don't lose your fleet (except through favorable trades with the enemy).
2) Don't lose your cities.
3) Raze every former Japanese and English city you can reach without violating 1 and 2 above.

[roland of gilead]

I have a couple of harbours on the go which will help a bit with gold.

My issue i suspect will be i don't have many ranged ships

once i get my ships killed of course i will have lots of gold.

Will give CMF some time to chime in them play.

Pulling my ships back south and getting organised. Will protect that niter.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Very limited wifi,, brief..

Agreed on tech.

As far as war, I would avoid first strike and open by liberating Milne to Japan. Get x2 production, force Raiders to respond. Use straits to defend, can hit Punic if they go for Ilmatic.

Don't like privateers, prefer caravels but finish queues.

How easily can Russia pillage Cothons? Would fix gold and knock out Punic x1.5 production. 

Main goal is to eliminate enemy ship production and ships, draw concession.

[roland of gilead]

Played the turn. Moved my ships back.

They have a lot of scouts out going to be hard to hide them anywhere.

i am unclear where much of their troops might be so we need to get a handle on that.

any advice when your turn rolls round Williams would be great.

[roland of gilead]

ps how do you get that attack log i see in some pics.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Is from a mod. I think. Maybe new update.

Williams counted Norwegian fleet a few days ago. Punic can be estimated, is roughly similar to yours. Don't stress about hiding fleet, instead keep him uncertain about intentions, where you will attack - threaten multiple targets.

Thanks again

[williams482]

Turn 162:

Hello again. Step one (after the World Congress results, which y'all have already seen) is some housekeeping, cleaning up the thoroughly obsolete pillage pins in former Japan. I also swap research from Nationalism to Urbanization, and Electricity to Banking. Darwin is still out there for the taking, and the time has come to take him:



He appears in Borodino, and will begin his trek to the Eye of the Sahara next turn.

Suboptimal has a proposal:



That's much more reasonable than the last one we received, and I applaud the effort. I would take it, except that the Coal and Niter controlled by Sub's former capital are far and away more valuable to us than even the +10% boost empire wide that we would get from making peace and clearing out our horrific war weariness. So although I'd love to get out of this war, and I appreciate the offer, I am unable to accept.

Kaiser has a stranger offer for us:



I don't see why either of us should want Kaiser to join the war against Suboptimal, and I am seriously lothe to surrender niter without a really good reason. I refuse the deal so that I can actually take a look around (great job, Firaxis). We can spare Gypsum and Sugar. Kaiser has 5 Niter himself, so 15 is clearly so he can have 20 and upgrade something, probably a sword to a musket. Kaiser being stronger would be nice, but it's a luxury. Norway hasn't committed any major forces to that front recently, and even when they take the Mato Tipila island holdings, the two congested inland cities on Thesa will likely continue to resist just fine, maintaining the war weariness that is hopefully hurting them as much as ours is hurting us. So delaying my frigate upgrade schedule isn't a good deal for us. I do have a hanging 4 Niter I don't get any use from, which would bring Kaiser to 9 and allow him to upgrade something if he can beg one more and run the policy card. Along with the two luxuries, that's the best I can do.

At Adios Hermanos I finally purchase the coal tile, and redeploy my troops to defend that tile and the oncoming builder:



Woden has frigates now:



It certainly appears that he intends to meet us in the Arctic ocean, the same theater where we plan to meet him. In contrast, the Punic fleet appears relatively spread out, with large detachments both east and west of their core, and likely a large force returning from Japan. The biggest danger here would be a large Punic force pushing us further and further back with the threat of a first strike, preventing us from taking a defensible position. I think we'll be safe from that by virtue of speed and invulnerable city defenses, but that's probably their best option for applying pressure and putting me in a good position to make a significant mistake.

As for advice on the deployment of the Australian fleet, we're going to need to think about the details, and what movement we can see from the Raiders will be important there. We want to make sure your ships stay together and outside of vulnerable positions. To that end, make sure any great people you have are heading home as fast as possible to serve as invulnerable advance scouts, and that's probably the most valuable use of civilian units like the Missionary heading towards Brussels as well. As long as you're close enough to your intended deployment position to get back a turn or so before the war, though, feel free to fan out a bit and try to spot as much of the Punic navy as possible. The more we know about where (or if) they are concentrated, the better our odds of destroying them.

The Notification Log is a mod, I believe of the same name, which is available on Steam. I've found it to be somewhat clunky, but the benefits are obvious and well worth it.