Um...how do I do that, exactly? I didn't know that was possible...
|
[SPOILERS] Woden and ljubljana like boats
|
(October 24th, 2021, 22:07)ljubljana Wrote: Um...how do I do that, exactly? I didn't know that was possible... Bring him into a city (Oasis of Dawn) and then you can send him to any city or harbor you own. It is one of the options on the unit menu. You can do it with any great person and is how I have my General in Heimdall.
October 24th, 2021, 22:45
(This post was last modified: October 24th, 2021, 22:47 by ljubljana.)
oh! for some reason I thought you could only do that with non-military GP, okay. Well, that's rather immersion-breaking, but very good for us of course.
Looking at the board, I guess I should try to position my ships just out of reach of williams in return, especially with the GA one turn behind. That probably means sticking to their current positions or repositioning north slightly. Does that sound okay to you? We would retain some capacity of hitting him if he goes for Heimdall, though not sure what we can do about Freya... 
Yes, I would position them just out of reach and see what he does. He has 6 targets to chose from (4 cities, my fleet, and your fleet). Let's see what he does. If he splits his fleet to go after multiple targets, we might get an opportunity to do some damage. My cities should be able to last at least the first round of attacks.
Edit: I am off to bed and shutting my computer down for the night. Good luck on your turn.
October 25th, 2021, 02:19
(This post was last modified: October 25th, 2021, 03:10 by ljubljana.)
Turn 169 - Phoenicia
Made the following policy swap:  Started research on the otherwise-useless Enlightment (due in 3) so I can bank a quick policy swap in case we need to drop something for Bastions, or maybe National Identity once we are in the thick of combat. Step 1 of determining my naval deploy on the Russian front:  This is how far they can reach with just their visible ships. That ironclad has TEN movement, which doesn't even add up - 5 base + 1 GA + 1 GL + 2 dedication is only 9. The caravels have one more movement than expected too - 9 without the GA and 10 with it. Not sure what's going on there, let me know if you can think of any bonus I missed. It's even worse than that, too, as support bonuses reveal more ships in the fog as pinned here, extending their reach even further. This is the final, safe deploy I end up going with:  So far away that my units can barely fit on the screen with his, even zoomed all the way out. But any closer than this, and I would be in first strike range. I do leave one caravel in what might be an exposed position (if more ships are in the fog) next to his Great Writer (Homer), which is a nasty thorn in our side. Next turn I will sacrifice that ship to take the GW out and deny him the ability to scout my fleet every turn, since the only way we can approach without inviting a first strike is to hope we don't get scouted for a turn. More realistically, I am guaranteed to take a first strike almost regardless of what williams does, unless he moves his ships implausibly badly. But a first strike would annihilate my navy unless I occupy a strong defensive position (which this is, to be fair) or it is only a small fraction of his navy doing the first striking. Therefore, my ships are almost totally powerless as far as an active role in this theater is concerned. My best bet is probably to hope he splits his fleet (though I'm not sure why he would) and then take a limited first strike at this choke once the GA is around (starting next turn) and trade efficiently there. But Heimdall and Freyr would not survive such a plan. Williams has made no mistakes as far as I can see - he is even with me in diplo visibility and has WoR and Oligarchic Legacy up as required. I can't see if he has an MA yet, but he did sign some type of alliance with roland very recently so I think it's a fair presumption. We just have too few ships - I think all of my non-ship builds since before the TAD war were mistakes, and there were not many of them (mostly just the walls). Somewhat better news on the Australian front:  My horsie scouted roland's caravels heading up north where I can fight them instead of at Fort Miln. I therefore go with this deploy:  Horsie will die if roland goes for it, but I will get a chance for a significant first strike if so. Roland, in contrast to williams, is missing a spy and both OL and WoR and could be in some trouble if he chooses to engage next turn, though he does likely outnumber me very badly at this point. No idea what would need to happen in the next few turns to give us a realistic chance here - even if williams splits his fleet, it won't really be split, as he can cross even a 10 tile gap in one turn to smash me if I try any offensive moves. It will take him a few turns to chew through your walls with just 10 visible frigate fleets, but I think Heimdall and Freyr are probably doomed in addition to the CS. If you can mass enough ironclads in the south, though, maybe you can hold him off for a while at the choke there, and similarly I think I have some prospects of trading evenly at my choke in the north. But I don't know if the game will be winnable with you down two core cities unless I can annihilate Australia's fleet and start burning cities to compensate. PS, I think you should focus on the frigates with your city strikes, unless you think you can kill a unit otherwise. Those will be the rate-limiting factor in his conquest, and even if you only hit them into the yellow, at least they will have to rotate out for a while or risk dying to the next turn's attack. edit: Another plan to consider is me retreating even further north, exposing your capital and trying to fight him at Abjad/Mitla/Nsibidi. Perhaps that would induce him to actually meaningfully split his fleet, if some portion was engaged with your ironclads in the south, and it would put our walls to some use by trading them (and the cities they are attached to) for more time. But I am not confident that this approach would have much chance of success either. edit2: Oh, and I faith-bought a library at Cuneiform with Jesuit Education after spending the whole game trickling faith in from 4 pearl tiles. At least we will have a nice dry place to store all the clay tablets chronicling our imminent demise 
(October 25th, 2021, 02:19)ljubljana Wrote: This is how far they can reach with just their visible ships. That ironclad has TEN movement, which doesn't even add up - 5 base + 1 GA + 1 GL + 2 dedication is only 9. The caravels have one more movement than expected too - 9 without the GA and 10 with it. Not sure what's going on there, let me know if you can think of any bonus I missed. It's even worse than that, too, as support bonuses reveal more ships in the fog as pinned here, extending their reach even further. He might have the promotion that adds +1 movement on them. Quote:So far away that my units can barely fit on the screen with his, even zoomed all the way out. But any closer than this, and I would be in first strike range. I do leave one caravel in what might be an exposed position (if more ships are in the fog) next to his Great Writer (Homer), which is a nasty thorn in our side. Next turn I will sacrifice that ship to take the GW out and deny him the ability to scout my fleet every turn, since the only way we can approach without inviting a first strike is to hope we don't get scouted for a turn. Yes, get ride of the scouts. Then you might be able to send some ships around Balder to get closer, as long as you keep some ships where they are in case he moves up to check. Regardless, I think you need to try to use the islands around there to help defend. I think fighting him in open ocean might be suicide. Quote:Williams has made no mistakes as far as I can see - he is even with me in diplo visibility and has WoR and Oligarchic Legacy up as required. I can't see if he has an MA yet, but he did sign some type of alliance with roland very recently so I think it's a fair presumption. We just have too few ships - I think all of my non-ship builds since before the TAD war were mistakes, and there were not many of them (mostly just the walls). The only good news here is that he is running a -89 gold deficit, based on the last 2 turns. Not sure how long he can continue with that. I guess he has 2,073 gold in the bank and can pillage harbors, so he could keep it going for a while. But to add to this, Australia also has a -28 gold deficit and much less gold in the bank (174 gold) and he may need gold form Russia soon. Might be a good reason to push on Australia and pillage his harbors to make it worse for him. Quote:No idea what would need to happen in the next few turns to give us a realistic chance here - even if williams splits his fleet, it won't really be split, as he can cross even a 10 tile gap in one turn to smash me if I try any offensive moves. It will take him a few turns to chew through your walls with just 10 visible frigate fleets, but I think Heimdall and Freyr are probably doomed in addition to the CS. If you can mass enough ironclads in the south, though, maybe you can hold him off for a while at the choke there, and similarly I think I have some prospects of trading evenly at my choke in the north. But I don't know if the game will be winnable with you down two core cities unless I can annihilate Australia's fleet and start burning cities to compensate.I will have 3 core cities, no way he can take my capital, Thor, or Loki, they are too well protected and all 3 will have Renaissance walls in 2 turns. Also, I am 5 turns from Steel, so depending on where he attacks, once I have Urban Defenses, he is going to have a rough time with it. Quote:edit: Another plan to consider is me retreating even further north, exposing your capital and trying to fight him at Abjad/Mitla/Nsibidi. Perhaps that would induce him to actually meaningfully split his fleet, if some portion was engaged with your ironclads in the south, and it would put our walls to some use by trading them (and the cities they are attached to) for more time. But I am not confident that this approach would have much chance of success either. He won't have vision on my capital and it would be an obvious trap. I expect him to take a single city on our mainland and then pillage me to death with faith bought units. He has near 3,000 faith. Regardless, this was always going to be a losing battle. I mean, I started with 5 non-desert hills in my entire core...too slow of a start. I think our best option right now is to push on Australia and pressure Russia to react to his partner being hurt. He is a much weaker force and you may be able to hurt him more than Russia can hurt me. The next 5 turns are going to be critical (for me at least) because once I get Urban Defense, he is going to have a much harder time taking my cities. I also need to think about chopping the piss out of my cities. I need to find out where Conservation is located so I can plant forests. Edit: Also, I will send you coal next turn and all my gold. I might have a pillage opportunity next turn (if my privateer doesn't die), so you might have enough gold for an upgrade.
October 25th, 2021, 11:12
(This post was last modified: October 25th, 2021, 11:13 by ljubljana.)
The pinned 10-move ironclad is unpromoted, so I don't think that can be the answer. Some of the caravels are promoted, but I have to imagine they have Embolon and not the very underpowered Helmsman. Or, at least, it would be a break for us if not.
Fighting him in the open is definitely suicide, but I am not sure I see us coming back from getting pillaged with faith-bought Cossacks either. Not sure if we should throw all our units into a hopeless fight vs him to prevent him from taking a mainland city, or just allow that to happen. On the bright side, Heimdall would probably flip back after just a few turns like Roland's did, so we may not have to deal with more than 3 or so Cossacks immediately. If you are that close to steel, maybe you should save up gold for a battleship upgrade instead of sending me gold. Not sure how much that would cost, but boosting your city ranged attack strength is probably more impactful at this point than boosting my city defenses, especially since you may need to kill Cossacks with them soon. (October 25th, 2021, 11:12)ljubljana Wrote: If you are that close to steel, maybe you should save up gold for a battleship upgrade instead of sending me gold. Not sure how much that would cost, but boosting your city ranged attack strength is probably more impactful at this point than boosting my city defenses, especially since you may need to kill Cossacks with them soon. Battleships are now at Refining and why I need to build a coal plant to see where it is located. |
