Kaiser unsurprisingly requested 11 niter, and for reasons discussed previously I am forced to reject him.
I've been struggling to keep track of research planning with the various delays (some of them self inflicted) so this seems a good time to lay everything out in as much detail as possible. Darwin will be fired off on t167, so tech-wise we need to have Steel lined up ready to go at that time, plus one more tech that between the two can absorb 1500 beakers without losing any overflow when the second completes. Steel has been boosted to 655/1644 (989 left) and Gunpowder is at 0/730, so we need a combined 1,719 beakers to complete both. I believe that means we can get away with investing 219 beakers ahead of Darwin with no losses, as the actual beaker income from the turn the second tech completes is tracked separately from the overflow off the first tech and will persist for another turn. So we also want to be careful that our third tech is not less than two turns from completion or we will waste beakers there instead. And to pile on, we don't want to be carrying any overflow when Darwin is fired off or it will be overwritten. Yes, this is definitely the kind of stuff the game should force me to care about.
Tech plan:
Currently 181.2 beakers per turn
- t163: Banking at 528.4/730. Swap research to Gunpowder (0/730)
- t164: Gunpowder at 181.2/730. Electricity boosted to 1419/1500. Swap research to Electricity.
- t165: Electricity completes with 100.4 beakers overflow. Start research on Banking
- t166: Banking completes with 80 beakers overflow. Start research on Rifling (boosted to 444/1,116)
- t167: Rifling at 705.2/1,116. Swap research to Steel (655/1644). Trigger Darwin, Steel completes with 511 overflow. Swap research to Gunpowder.
- t168: Gunpowder completes with 143.4 overflow. Start research on Military Science (boosted to 444/1,116)
- t169: Military Science at 768.6/1,116
- t170: Military science at 949.8/1,116
- t171: Military Science completes with 15 overflow. Start research on I dunno.
Dumping 260 beakers into rifling isn't ideal, but that's the cost of avoiding overflow losses, and if the game runs even 15 more turns we'll probably want that tech.
As for civics, we need to line things up such that we upgrade the maximum number of quads to frigates at a discount while running discount cards for a single turn, then flip into combat strength boosting policies in preparation for the war. We have Nationalism and The Enlightenment on tap as one turn civics to make that possible, and although we will lose some overflow (26 clefs) by going straight from Nationalism to The Enlightenment, that's worth it to avoid running the upgrade cards for any longer than necessary.
Because of the way stockpiles work, the most of a resource you can possibly expend in one turn is your stockpile cap plus one turn's income, if your stockpile was full at the start of the turn. In effect, the turn's income is added to your stockpile if and when there is room for it. This means that if we time things right, we can upgrade six quads on the turn of our first civic swap, then one more on the subsequent turn right before we swap out of the upgrade policies. We have seven quads in reach of the Arctic theater who seem obvious choices (plus two more in the Gulf of Carpentaria south of Australia who may never get a chance). We currently have 40 niter, so we'll hit 50 on t164 and "60" on t165. I want to be able to reposition the fleet without worrying about upgrades on t167 just before the war breaks out, so our first civic swap must happen on t165, with the next one on t166. So...
Civics plan:
Currently 106.7 clefs per turn
- t163: Urbanization at 106.8/960. 40/50 Niter.
- t164: Urbanization at 215.5/960. Swap research to Nationalism (886.6/960). 50/50 Niter
- t165: Nationalism completed with 33.3 overflow. Start research on The Enlightenment (413.6/444) 60/50 Niter. Swap out Conscription and Wars of Religion for Professional Army and Retinues. Upgrade six quads.
- t166: The Enlightenment completes with 106.8 overflow (2.9 clefs lost). Start research on Urbanization. Upgrade final quad. Swap out Professional Army and Retinues for Wars of Religion and Oligarchic Legacy, and maybe swap Press Gangs for Conscription? Still need to think on that one.
- t167 and on: push Urbanization -> Colonialism, hope that the mystery modern civic is Autocracy or Class Struggle for a better government, reevaluate from there.
All right, so that's cool.
At Adios Hermanos a Chinese courser shows up at the border. I fortify the troops we have in theater and move the builder closer to the coal. I could take a rather paltry potshot at that knight with my treb, but I decide against it. No point in offering up free experience.
The Raiders continue to cluster their forces around the Arctic Ocean:
Ljubljana also has a fleet scattered along his coastline:
There are two others just out of sight to the west. These ships seem to have been milling about for a little while, although they may be returnees from the Japanese front (which still has a few Punic ships in the area, although clearly fewer). Ljubljana certainly understand that massing ships together is the right thing to do (spoiler?) so I highly doubt this is actually a static defensive screen, and I fully expect these units to migrate south and east to join with the others over the next few turns. This caravel will certainly be going that way.
Our Man at Arms searching for that barb camp south of Svalbard meets some new friends who are probably in the know, but unwilling to share:
Am getting married tomorrow so last advice for a month or so
Remember key targets are ships over cities. If you sink all their fleets the cities will fall eventually. Outnumber them 3:2, just make sure to exploit numerical advantage fully and coordinate. Phoenician fleet is split east and west, might be best target for Australia if Milne is tough.
Just work together and keep eyes on the ball.
And have fun!! Is a game. Enjoy the ride, win or lose, and put on a good show.
Roland has apparently completed Ballistics, passing the boost to us. Our second (and third) privateers are ready to go, which boosts Electricity, and Sevastopol finally completes it's canal, releasing Sissoi Veliki's ships into the wider world:
Roland, it might be worth deleting those pins, just to avoid clutter and make sure I'll notice if you feel the need to message me in this fashion. And please, make sure you don't block Darwin's path, as shown by the pins.
I swap research to Electricity and Nationalism, as planned, and begin a new round of caravels in our newly freed up shipyards.
Speaking of pins, I decided to slap a team-visible pin on every hostile military unit I could find on this turn. All told, the Raider's visible militaries are as follows:
That totals 1941 milpower, against 2954 milpower on the scoreboard. Based on past observation I think there are more Phoenician ships out of easy scouting range near the Mato Tipila island, where a Japanese city was recently conquered:
I had visibility across almost all the north and eastern shoreline of the Phoenician home continent, but I know almost nothing about the large bay on the opposite side of that land mass. There could be a large force deployed there as well. It is also possible that Ljubljana merged many of those fleets this turn, and the lagging milpower score is hiding those. We'll have to see what it looks like next turn.
That totals 1028, again roughly 2/3rds of their listed 1508. I know they have ground troops near the Japanese cities on Thesa, including at least one bombard, and likely have a few more ships in that area as well. It is also very plausible that they have ships on the western side of their core. Also of note, there is a settler in the city of Freya, near the unnamed island west of Svalbard:
Woden has recently learned the secrets of Industrialization, as I can see from the extra yields on the coal tiles in his territory (one of which just had a lumber mill removed from it this turn). No doubt this settler is intended for the coal deposit on this island, something I considered before deciding that settlers were just too expensive and we'd hack together enough ironclads running a coal deficit anyway. Worse, this means that they will have the capacity to construct ironclads as soon as that resource is connected, and they have no shortage of cash for upgrades. With that new settlement, two sources in their core, and two more in former Japanese lands, they will have plenty of coal to upgrade all of their caravel fleets, outnumbering the six total ironclad fleets we expect to have in theater for the opening acts of the war. We still have a decent force of frigates and a metric fuckton of caravels, but 65 vs 80 strength isn't exactly a great matchup. That battle in the Arctic sea now looks an awful lot dicier all of a sudden.
Oh, and Bruidane managed to build a caravel in his capital. Just one more ship we have to deal with.
On the Adios Hermanos front, no changes of particular note:
In two turns we'll get another +3 coal, and should actually be in the black there once we merge all our ironclads together.
Roland, which City State do you think we should try to liberate if the Raiders are kind enough to grant us the first strike? It's going to be a slightly tricky bit of business because the Raiders move between me and you, unless you bring your full force to the Arctic Ocean as well. Which, maybe we should go for, and live with the risk of a secondary force tearing up Australia yet again? It's the fleet battles that will decide the game, no matter what state the Australian coastlines are in. My only concern is if we can effectively coordinate a battle in that confined space.
Chevalier stuck "liberate" pins on a number of island cities, all of those were city states. Although liberating an English city might be much easier, they aren't very well defended.
Woden has ironclad fleets, but not all that many and they are all going to be pointed at me. If they wind up attacking you instead, I'll savage his homeland. Don't underrate your navy in compared to Ljubljana's, though: you still have a formidable contingent of ships, and Phoenicia definitely doesn't have ironclads yet. If you can get the first strike, an all important if, you'll be able to do a whole lot of damage. If we decide not to combine fleets, just be careful about attacking into narrow spaces where sinking one Norwegian ironclad can force you to expose the bulk of your fleet to a Phoenician counterattack.
Assuming that we opt to keep our fleets separate, we really need to figure out what Ljubljana is doing with his Japan taskforce. If they continue to attempt to take Japanese cities, you should attempt to drop a hammer on them so they can't help out against Russia in the Arctic sea. Objectives here are simple: kill as many ships as possible so they can't use them to hurt us elsewhere.
If they instead withdraw east towards the Raider home continent, you need to be positioned to destroy any stragglers, then liberate and/or burn former Japan and England as quickly and efficiently as possible. Objectives: eliminate any strategic resource supplies being generated by those territories (I'll pin all the coal and niter in that region on my next turn, which I'll play in a few hours), and make sure that captured territory never becomes sufficiently developed to help rebuild their fleets if the battle in the Arctic turns into a mutually destructive stalemate.
Finally, if they direct a large task force to come after your cities (which seems unlikely at this point) you again need to mass your fleet somewhere that you can get a first strike against that force, even if it means they take a few cities off you in the opening turns. Objectives: same as scenario #1, kill as many ships as possible so they can't use them to hurt us elsewhere. Eviscerating a bunch of Phoenician frigates at the cost of one of your more exposed and less developed cities is a fantastic trade for us, if it comes to that.
If you see any Raider ships on your turn that were not visible on my most recent turn (revealed by your unit movements, presumably) try to put a team-visible pin on them. That missionary near the industrial city state should definitely be used to scout out Phoenician ship movements in that area, the information is far and away more valuable than any benefits of spreading the faith. Try to capture the civ, unit type, promotions, single/fleet status, and turn number, so we can get an accurate understanding of which chips are where and what direction they are going. For example, one of my pins reads "ljub Car1-F t164", meaning "Ljubljana Caravel Fleet with 1 promotion on turn 164." I hope that's intelligible to people who aren't me.
Bruindane pillaged one of our traders with that caravel. Silly me, I thought they were immune, but we don't actually have the right golden age dedication for that. Annoying! Oryol pauses it's Arena build and starts a replacement, due in 3 turns.
Research goes into Banking and The Enlightenment, as planned.
Near Japan, Ljubljana has rearranged their attacking ships:
There's a missing triple promoted frigate here, and a new single promoted one. It is possible that it was just merged with the other 3 promotion frigate into a fleet, but that would be a very strange choice given the way merged units get all promotions that either unit had: merging a greener unit with a triple promoted veteran would be far more efficient. Perhaps Ljubljana is unaware of that mechanic, or perhaps the other 3 promotion frigate remains at large.
Now, where did the naval force east of here wind up? The vast majority of them (all but one Caravel fleet) changed direction and went back towards Japanese lands:
Now, I know from tracking various other distinct ships and embarked units that Woden and Ljubljana's units are all limited to 5 tiles per turn. Ours travel at 8 per turn, which is the advantage we absolutely must leverage in order to win the first strike and likely the game. We also know that, obviously, Ljubljana has the ability to merge units into fleets, and has already done that a few times. Additionally, any assault on Fort Krasia or Oasis of Dawn will be confined into a narrow space where strength per tile is at a premium. So, why did these frigates which moved fewer than 5 tiles not get merged together last turn? Inquiring minds want to know. Perhaps this is an attempt to make it appear that they have more Phoenician forces in this theater than they actually do? That seems obviously futile, I have ships and great people spying on them from locations that should be plainly visible. Or maybe it's completely innocuous. Who can say.
On a related note, it finally occurs to me that this city is pretty darned suspicious:
That's the only captured city that went over to Phoenicia (clearly Norway is intended to be the stronger partner in that alliance), and it's the only one that controls a canal through former Axis territory. The only Raider ships still engaged with Japan are Phoenician, and there are many more Punic ships than Norwegian ones unaccounted for, potentially in areas not terribly far from that city. Roland, I strongly suggest deploying a ship (probably a privateer) in the bay to the west of this city. That should guarantee a warning if a large force pushes on Australia through that channel, instead of the more obvious route from the north. Keep your ships massed in the north for now, that's a good position to defend your shores, and act against whatever targets are appropriate once the war breaks out.
As I suspected, I really don't have any idea how movement works for embarked units in this game:
So, we don't need to care about my planned path anymore. I'll park Darwin on a natural wonder tile next turn, then set him off on the subsequent turn. In theory I could accelerate the timetable for Steel (and thus Military Science) by one turn now that we can set him off on t166, but I don't see a way to do that that doesn't (potentially) eat 80 beakers of overflow so that's not an option.
We have a policy swap, and we use it:
This leaves us with an enormous gold per turn deficit (-71!), which we're about to make even worse. Six quads are transformed into fresh new frigates, at the cost of 990g and 60 Niter. We then start merging other units together, prioritizing merging ironclads to save coal, then privateers, then Line of Battle frigates and Embolon caravels with green units of the same type. After merging everything I intend to merge this turn, fleets make up a substantial minority of my combined naval forces. I intend to merge more units next turn as some veterans of the Indochinese conflict join the main group. I think that overall fleets are going to be better than single units in these conditions, where there are a lot of narrow spaces in and out of probable battle zones, and concentration of striking power is at a premium. Fleets of older can also fight Woden's ironclads with much less lopsided results than single units can, and that is going to matter. And they are cheaper too; we're all the way up to -51 gpt.
Based on the (lack of) movement of the caravels up front, I believe this is where Ljubljana is gathering their forces:
Woden doesn't seem to have a major concentration of ships anywhere I can see. The closest thing is this small cluster south of his core:
Also of note here: Woden doesn't exactly have a lot of safe places to upgrade his caravels into ironclads, and he hasn't hooked up any coal yet (his builder on the coal tile from last turn appears to have chopped something, perhaps the yet unfinished Encampment?). If we want to, we could push aggressively into this area and try to pounce on pre-upgraded caravels in the opening turn of the war. It's a little risky and we would have to commit to it starting next turn, but with our speed advantage, scouting knowledge from great people, and Ljubljana potentially sitting back, it could work. I'll be thinking about that between turns.
I did goof up a bit and leave one of the scouting caravels too far from the main group to rejoin it in time. Instead, that unit will disappear into the open ocean north of the Phoenician core, and descend to wreak some minor havoc after the war begins, when most units in the area should have cleared out. I'd definitely prefer one more caravel on the front lines, but better than getting that ship blown up for nothing.
Oracle Bones will flip next turn:
There's a berserker around here somewhere which I assume will immediately start pillaging. Hopefully the melee units the free city will spawn don't decide to come after our cities instead of inconveniencing Woden.
I decide to move my Artist south of the Norwegian core five tiles due east. That unit has nothing to do except look around, and in the unlikely event that the Raiders attempt to derive from that the speed of my ships, which have mostly been darting around almost randomly trying to get eyes on the Raider navy, then they might underestimate my movement capabilities. That's a cheap trick that I definitely don't expect to work, but why not.
Nothing new of note at Adios Hermanos. Coal will be connected next turn, and I took a potshot at that courser because again, why not.
Woden has 38 techs and 28 civics, Ljubljana 34 techs and 26 civics. Woden's most advanced tech is Industrialization in the second rung of the Industrial era, Ljubljana is a rung behind, presumably with Steam Power. For civics, Russia and both Raiders are still on the first rung of the Industrial era, where Nationalism is located.
Roland, what techs are located after Ballistics? Anything worth pursuing?
Dmitrii Donskoi and Fuji on our southeastern shore are close to completing two more ironclads:
I swap Dmitrii to a caravel, and will do the same at Fuji next turn. Those ironclads would never be able to make it over to the battle east of Norway, but would be very useful if a Raider strike force entered this area. But, definitely not worth sucking up two coal per turn until we actually need the units, so better to just have them ready to complete at a moment's notice.
Woden has a privateer skulking around in the southern ice for some reason. I've been tailing for the past couple turns, since an artist bumped into it by accident on t164. My ironclad to the right bumped into it this turn, then moved away so it disappeared. Well, "disappeared." You remember PBEM7? Firaxis sure hasn't done anything about that problem:
I am not trying to exploit this bug, but it's very obvious when just moving units normally and it is very difficult to ignore relevant information so I can't truthfully claim that this bit of idiocy hasn't affected any of my choices. On the bright side for Woden, apparently the unit will become properly invisible once we are formally at war.
I suspect the plan for this unit is to coastal raid my cities on Svalbard. For better or worse there is precious little to pillage on that coast, just a grass hill mine and a niter tile. I do have a warrior in Seniavin, who I move to the niter tile and upgrade for 125g, to better absorb any attempts to drive that unit off. I suspect that in practice that privateer will be a quick snack for freshly built melee ships out of these ports if it dares to reveal itself on the outset of the war.
I upgrade a 7th quad to a frigate, and merge four ironclads (including the two above) to create two additional fleets. We were at -7 coal per turn coming into the turn, built three ironclads, and merged four more, so we should now be consuming 8 per turn, but now we can throw down an additional mine to raise our coal income from +6 to +9:
That means that next turn, we should be able to upgrade a caravel fleet to an ironclad fleet, and be net neutral on coal income until the next ironclad completes. Except actually no, the game will just auto-upgrade one of our queued caravel builds. In isolation, an Embolon ironclad fleet next turn (for 580g without the discount card, not cheap) beats a single ironclad unit in ~4 turns. This does make clear that going straight through to The Enlightenment last turn was actually a bit of an error error: had I been paying better attention to the coal consumption of my navy, I would have put a turn (plus a teensy bit of now-wasted overflow) into Urbanization, then swapped to The Enlightenment this turn, suffering another turn at roughly -70 gpt, but allowing me to upgrade that caravel fleet at half cost. Oops.
Oh, and if I'd delayed the ironclad that finished in Admiral Seniavin this turn, I could have made it two caravel fleet upgrades. Oh well.
Anyway, in order to make any upgrades happen I have to swap off every single caravel build in my empire, which seems unlikely to be worth it now. If I don't do anything, the caravel at Knyaz Suvurov will upgrade in queue and complete as an ironclad at the start of t169, which is only one turn slower than the caravel's expected completion time (and thus, the same as if I delatyed the caravel one turn to allow an upgrade). That unit would be able to immediately merge with the ironclad coming out of Navarin at the same time, so that works out nicely. And we'll be at +1 net coal on t167 and t168, so we want a second caravel build in a high production city ready to be upgraded in queue. Borodino just finished a caravel and could complete an ironclad in four turns, the next partially completed caravel is in Sevastopol and would complete in... 4 turns. So no difference there. Borodino is slightly closer to the front lines, so it will start an ironclad-to-be.
Also visible in that screenshot, more Chinese coursers. My fortified knight on a hill across a river will probably take about 35 damage from two courser attacks, and deal about 60 damage each in return. Suffice it to say I'm not worried right now, but out of an abundance of caution I spend 425 faith on another Pike and Shot and throw another 160g (and 10 iron) turning the chariot into a knight. That should pretty much eliminate any chance of an attacking force breaking through onto the coal tile. I also shoot the injured courser with my crossbow for another 12 damage.
Ljubljana has not pushed his front line forward, and in fact many of the ships I pinned in this area last turn are gone, out of view of Michelangelo who traveled a slightly meandering path from northeast of Mitla to his present location on this turn. The caravel further northwest doesn't see anything new before fleeing out of sight due north, so my best guess is that these ships were tucked into Abugida Bay. Perhaps an attempt to hide them from me?
So, war plans. What exactly am I trying to do here.
Barring a mutually exclusive opportunity elsewhere or an unanticipated amount of pressure from the Raiders, I fully intend to capture the Norwegian city (and former city state) of Hod on at the start of the war. I will have, pending merges on this turn, four different Bombardment/Rolling Barrage frigate fleets in theater. Those things will hit a city with effective strength of 55 + 10 + 7 + 10 = 82 strength, plus 5 more with an admiral. Oh, and I believe the military alliance will get us another 5, cities don't seem to benefit from those. Hod displays 50 strength, presumably 60 with a ship inside. It has ancient walls, and medieval walls were started at some point. Whatever the numbers, four frigates will be complete overkill, and will leave the rest of the fleet with plenty of options.
Now, why take this city at all? I'll get some extra visibility and deny Woden his only sources of Sugar and Mercury, but more importantly this city will be the place that my Great Scouts teleport to when attacked. My plan for the early turns is to use Michelangelo, Homer, and Bhasa as screens, placed at a distance such that they will see any units close enough to attack my ships, allowing me to hit them first (or withdraw, if appropriate). If I play my cards right here, the immortal scouting screen plus my three tile speed advantage should make it almost impossible for them to land a first strike. Capturing Balder a little further north would be helpful for similar reasons, as well as providing a slightly better view of what Ljubljana is up to over there. That city is seven tiles from their current front line, just far enough that they could attack it after it was captured, but too far to do any real damage to our attacking force on the opposite side.
Now, the enemy fleets. Much more important than any island city captures. We need the vast majority of our fleet clumped together somewhere that allows us to hit an enemy fleet pushing into the Arctic ocean on the opening turns of the war, or to methodically push into that space without allowing either fleet to get the first strike on us, conquer Heimdal and/or Freya to get our beachhead, and lash out in one direction or the other whenever the Raider fleets do decide to engage. For this turn, I'm clumping the fleet together here:
Those "max vis" pins are the farthest Ljubljana's or Woden's nearby caravels could see if they moved their full movement in our direction next turn. The only unit within that range is a single caravel which was previously scouting out the Arctic ocean. I cannot imagine that the Raiders are unaware of my fleet in this area given Ljubljana's conservative deployment here, but obviously I'd rather they not be aware of the exact location.
New policies:
As discussed this is basically our max-strength configuration, accepting significant economic losses in exchange for combat strength and shipbuilding bonuses.
Woden has a plan to promote his ships:
Based on the Coal mine placed last turn, he can probably get a builder to cut that jungle tile next turn. Obviously I would much prefer fighting unpromoted ironclad fleets, but there's nothing I can do about that except be ready to pounce if this project isn't completed at the onset of the war.
Speaking of Woden's coal, this other deposit seems to be at slight risk:
Sure would be a shame if one of those tornadoes whacked the builder who just chopped the forest from that coal tile...
No idea where that settler went, it's not visible in the water or on any coastal tiles in the immediate area. Movement rules are weird in this game, it may have been able to move all the way inland on this turn. If that's the case, it will likely be planted next turn.
Roland, I think this would be the best place for your scouting privateer to hang out:
There's a surprising number of Norwegian ships still hanging around here, including a frigate southwest of that caravel fleet which I revealed after taking the screenshot. That would seem to suggest they plan to do a bunch of raiding using scattered units, possibly with a long term plan of teching up to a unit stronger than we can handle? If so, we can expect a lot of random caravels showing up on our shores, and Fabian tactics in the main battle zone. Our response should be to crush their cities and pillage out their core.
Alternately, this is the advance guard for a powerful Phoenician invasion fleet, demonstrating a striking lack of subtlety.
Those Phoenician frigates attacking Japan are suddenly all fleets now:
Ovid is going to try to get a better look at exactly what ships are up here, and how worried Australia needs to be about them. Ovid would also like to annoy Ljubljana enough that he gets teleported somewhere else, and can then teleport to the Arctic to help out the main battle.
Our spy establishes in Demotic and begins a listening post. No new techs or civics from the Raiders.