[SPOILERS] Woden and ljubljana like boats

[ljubljana]

Interesting to note how decisively outmassed we are here despite big bonuses to ship construction and very few non-ship builds for the last 50 turns. I could probably have come up with 5 or 6 more caravel fleets if I had truly built nothing else, but that wouldn't be enough. Maybe if we had also not spent gold on anything else (did I really need those libraries? although, ok, I did need the monuments to hit Nationalism + WoR) and poured everything into ironclad upgrades in addition to that, things would look more even...in retrospect, knowing that we ended up being gold-limited and not coal-limited on our clad upgrades, that was likely the way to go.

But I also think that goes to show you that the power of the ship construction bonuses is a little overrated. The Cothon in particular gives +50% to ships, but because we have to run +100% policy cards for the whole game, that only gives 1 extra ship for every 4 I would have otherwise, which Russia surely beat in terms of effective production multiplier with Work Ethic + DoA. Phoenicia is a top-tier naval civ for sure, but I think the Cothon as a driver of this functions more because it's a cheap harbor than because of the extra ships.

edit: I probably need to belatedly start walls in my inland city next turn lol. Dumb of me to not do that in Limes when I had the chance...

edit2: Top 4 self-criticisms from me are looking provisionally like:

4. Missing Oligarchic Legacy, which I would be running now over Mercenaries if I could and which would be a huge help
3. Spending roughly 2-3k gold over the course of the game on nonessentials that were not ship upgrades
2. Running Isolationism domestic TRs instead of Wisselbanken foreign TRs for much of the game, which cost us a fortune in gold via opportunity cost and used up an invaluable wildcard policy slot
1. War with TAD over Writing on the Wall, which made us a game-long enemy for no real gains. The second war, which I desperately tried to avoid, turned out to be the best thing to happen to us all game, but the war I actually planned for was a major developmental setback even though we nominally won

but I am sure I will find a fifth mistake to round out the list before this is all over Maybe not fighting the "cancel out all GA points" resolution so the two of us could have Renaissance/Industrial GAs is significant enough to make the list. That, or not thinking hard enough about our strategic plan for this war, which I was definitely guilty of.

[Woden]

Funny how williams/roland have been posting all day but roland still hasn't passed the turn. We must have done something right to mess up their plans...or they don't have much of a strategy laid out and are winging it. Either way, it is a good sign for us.

Interesting to note how decisively outmassed we are here despite big bonuses to ship construction and very few non-ship builds for the last 50 turns. I could probably have come up with 5 or 6 more caravel fleets if I had truly built nothing else, but that wouldn't be enough. Maybe if we had also not spent gold on anything else (did I really need those libraries? although, ok, I did need the monuments to hit Nationalism + WoR) and poured everything into ironclad upgrades in addition to that, things would look more even...in retrospect, knowing that we ended up being gold-limited and not coal-limited on our clad upgrades, that was likely the way to go.

But I also think that goes to show you that the power of the ship construction bonuses is a little overrated. The Cothon in particular gives +50% to ships, but because we have to run +100% policy cards for the whole game, that only gives 1 extra ship for every 4 I would have otherwise, which Russia surely beat in terms of effective production multiplier with Work Ethic + DoA. Phoenicia is a top-tier naval civ for sure, but I think the Cothon as a driver of this functions more because it's a cheap harbor than because of the extra ships.

Russia had the perfect set up for their civilization + work ethic + dance of the aurora. Lots of tundra hills and forests. Crap land to most but game busting for Russia. Take a look...
   

Add in a player who knows how to exploit it (CMF) and this game was decided before it really started. You can't complete with that type of production until the late game and I don't think we are going to be able to hold on long enough to get to that point, and even if we do, we need to build ships instead of improving our lands. He even had a bunch of seafood to make up the lack of food typically found in tundra areas.

In addition, we had to fight TAD, and to a smaller extent Kaiser. Two players that can put up a good fight. Russia has fought suboptimal and while he is a decent player, he tends to get caught up in the development side of the game and not to sure how much of a fight he put up against Russia. Also, giving their votes on the last congress, they are looking to develop instead of stopping the game leader. I am actually really surprised they haven't agreed to peace yet.

As for you building other things beyond ships, you wouldn't have been able to afford those ships and would be so far behind in tech that Russia would be able to walk all over you. If there is any mistake in your game play, I would say continuing to build ships once you wiped out TAD's fleet. You could have developed a little earlier and then switched to shipbuilding once you improved a bit. Then, you would have been a little further along because things were developed earlier.

All in all, we have put up a decent game so far and are going to make this very difficult for Russia. Nothing wrong with that!

edit2: Top 4 self-criticisms from me are looking provisionally like:

4. Missing Oligarchic Legacy, which I would be running now over Mercenaries if I could and which would be a huge help

Definitely a mistake on this one.

3. Spending roughly 2-3k gold over the course of the game on nonessentials that were not ship upgrades

Not a mistake, it help speed your development and if you just continued to build ships, you would be worse off...not enough income to sustain your fleet and further behind in tech.

2. Running Isolationism domestic TRs instead of Wisselbanken foreign TRs for much of the game, which cost us a fortune in gold via opportunity cost and used up an invaluable wildcard policy slot

Yes, this is a mistake. All you have to do is look at our income differences. I am not running any gold generating cards and have 5x your income. Production is not the end all in this game and gold is just production you can use anywhere.

1. War with TAD over Writing on the Wall, which made us a game-long enemy for no real gains. The second war, which I desperately tried to avoid, turned out to be the best thing to happen to us all game, but the war I actually planned for was a major developmental setback even though we nominally won

Definitely not a mistake. We would be in much worst shape than we are in right now. We were able to bring one of our civilization from worst to first in tech rates. My core doesn't have the production capacity to be able to catch up to Russia and we needed to expand. Also, we won't have nearly the amount of gold we do without all the pillaging. We have a played a solid game, making the best of situation we were dealt.

[ljubljana]

Funny how williams/roland have been posting all day but roland still hasn't passed the turn. We must have done something right to mess up their plans...or they don't have much of a strategy laid out and are winging it. Either way, it is a good sign for us.

I noticed this too...I wonder what's going on? I know williams is a great and detailed tactical micromanager from PBEM18, so it may just be that he has drawn up several battle plans and they are choosing between them. With ships that can move 10 spaces per turn, he has a huge number of possible attack vectors.

There is also the decision about what roland should do, which is not obvious either. I think I can beat him in a straight fight, but only if I have some help from geography - if he can sneak ships past my caravels and hit my frigates, I could be surrounded and overwhelmed. He is probably trying to figure out the best way to both do that and pressure Fort Miln at the same time.

I wonder if williams might move his ships 4-5 tiles north, towards my fleet, but NOT declare war this turn. That would be very messy for us, as he would still be out of range of my ships and I would then have to choose between giving up my defensive position and being hit with a first strike. In the latter case, he could move NW past my ships before declaring to surround my fleet and totally undermine my position.

As for you building other things beyond ships, you wouldn't have been able to afford those ships and would be so far behind in tech that Russia would be able to walk all over you. If there is any mistake in your game play, I would say continuing to build ships once you wiped out TAD's fleet. You could have developed a little earlier and then switched to shipbuilding once you improved a bit. Then, you would have been a little further along because things were developed earlier.

All in all, we have put up a decent game so far and are going to make this very difficult for Russia. Nothing wrong with that!

I think I meant this more in conjunction with other changes like the Wisselbanken TRs so that I could actually afford more ships. But yeah, while I may have overshot a little on beakers, I did need to get into the 80s at least on science to hit Steam Power and needed every last bit of culture I added to reach Nationalism and WoR. So there are not many builds I could have realistically subbed out for more ships. I think not building aqueducts and IZs was the right call too, they would have taken 40-50 turns to pay off at 6 hammers/turn and I didn't have room for the doubling policy. As far as cash goes, I probably should have hand-built the monuments instead of buying them, so I could upgrade clads at half-cost, and certain purchases from earlier in the game like Cuneiform's lighthouse and the fish tile at Linear A (ugh) are definite sources of regret. But probably not too much more I could have saved beyond that. And that's just the gold economy - I think we did a great job managing the niter economy, having translated nearly every unit we mined into a half-cost frigate via upgrades. We may be outmassed in raw ship numbers here, but I think we actually have more total frigates than Russia + Australia do, and that would be the reason why.

What I really think I should have done was developed more earlier, before the second TAD war, instead of spending t50-t90 building stuff like biremes that just ended up trading with TAD's galleys. This is what I mean by that first war being a mistake, it set my development back substantially and we only got Writing on the Wall in exchange. The second TAD war, in contrast, was a huge success and is the only reason we are competitive. Though, in an ideal world, if TAD hadn't attacked us, allying with him and suboptimal in an anti-Russia coalition in the t120s may have been the overall best move.

And you are right, even though we will probably lose and I think I made a few significant unforced errors, I am quite proud of the game we have played overall

[Woden]

Turn 169-Vikings
Start of the turn, will wait to finish turn once we discuss. No war yet  This means I will have medieval walls in all my front facing cities and double the wall health.  Here is where Russia moved...
   

I suspect he figured it would be easier to engage you and attack your cities now that frigates are fairly useless against my cities. I am going to send you all my gold and 2 coal. Maybe I send you 1 coal and you upgrade a single caravel. That would bring your cities up to a DS of 60. Then, in 2 turns I send you more coal and you upgrade another single caravel and merge them to bring it up to a DS of 70.

The question becomes, how do we deploy?

Edit: Additional information. Russia is running War of Religion and Oligarchy legacy card but doesn't have a spy in my empire yet (I am getting +3 CS for diplo visibility, spy starts listen post this turn). Australia has none of those bonuses (as far as I can see).

[ljubljana]

Do you see any ships from Australia by former Japan? If they have no bonuses and moved ships into range, perhaps we should contemplate a first strike there. Also, glad to hear Russia doesn't have a spy vs. you - I think that means they didn't build a second one yet (available at Nationalism) and have one in place vs. me. They are probably working on that now, though, so it could change pretty shortly.

As far as deploy goes, I have a few thoughts. One is that this gives you the chance to mass your ironclads a bit more tightly, since you can join the southern fleet with the one outside Freyr, and maybe take a few of them out of the cities that he isn't directly threatening. That would give you more of a mass to engage with if we have to, and maybe could be used in 5-10 turns to surround him if he really is going to go for my cities.

For my deploy, this move looks like one geared towards getting in a first strike vs. me, or at least forcing me to vacate my defensive position. I kind of think I should do just that and try to draw him north into attacking my weaker-looking cities. Maybe even hold off on upgrading a clad for a turn or two to maintain the appearance of weakness, and pretend like I haven't hit steam power yet. Then, if he does commit to attacking my cities (which I can stack with LoB frigate fleets to wear down his frigate numbers), you can move your clads up en masse to hit him from the south while I upgrade clads and try to hold him off at my cities. Probably a pipe dream, as we said once before in a different context, but it could work.

edit: We will get flooded with Cossacks though (1/turn) if he takes one of my cities, since it won't flip back to me. Unfortunately, they did not all get Medieval Walls up in time either before I had to drop Limes (last turn). Maybe I should not have done that and should have dropped Mercenaries instead... Abjad will finish in 2t and Nsibidi has a chop coming in 3 that will finish them off. That is probably one turn too slow though...

[Woden]

I moved my ironclad out of Heimdall for a better look...
   

I am thinking that you open up the area in front of my capital and tuck your fleet behind that little island. (W)Odin finishes walls next turn and I will chop out the encampment. If he goes after your fleet, I might be able to get a few attacks in from the city. I can also move up my fleet a bit in the narrow in the south without getting to exposed. 

In addition, if Australia has no bonuses running, you could move up towards them and pressure them a bit. I have a little fleet in the area...
   

I was thinking of moving these guys by Jobs for the Boys to the south of Australia and look for pillage opportunities. I have an fleet ironclad, a fleet caravel, a single caravel, and 2 single frigates plus another fleet caravel a few turns behind them. I might even be able to take a city if there is nothing around.

[Woden]

Do you see any ships from Australia by former Japan? If they have no bonuses and moved ships into range, perhaps we should contemplate a first strike there. Also, glad to hear Russia doesn't have a spy vs. you - I think that means they didn't build a second one yet (available at Nationalism) and have one in place vs. me. They are probably working on that now, though, so it could change pretty shortly.

I see a single quadrireme by Fort Miln.

[ljubljana]

Hmm, I don't think I want to be in first strike range, though, especially if I could be attacked from both the east and south. I also need to move back as far as I can this turn if I want to retain the ability of defending my cities, since it takes 2t to get my fleet back to them and he will otherwise just run my ships down in open water. But if I move just out of first strike range again and he attacks your capital, I think I will still be able to hit him on the following turn. It also might tempt him into repeating his half-move from this turn if he's really intent on getting the first strike, which buys us time and draws him further north.

[ljubljana]

lol, what if I offer a DoF this turn just for fun? I'm sure he won't take it, but we have nothing to lose (besides our dignity, and I don't care about that). Maybe there is like a 1% chance that this half-assed move with no DoW means he is actually doubting that his attack will succeed.

[Woden]

Hmm, I don't think I want to be in first strike range, though, especially if I could be attacked from both the east and south. I also need to move back as far as I can this turn if I want to retain the ability of defending my cities, since it takes 2t to get my fleet back to them and he will otherwise just run my ships down in open water. But if I move just out of first strike range again and he attacks your capital, I think I will still be able to hit him on the following turn. It also might tempt him into repeating his half-move from this turn if he's really intent on getting the first strike, which buys us time and draws him further north.

This sounds good to me. I have a jungle I can chop at my capital (instead of removing the lumbermill) that will finish the walls and protect my capital a bit. Move your ships back and see if we can bait him into attaching my capital. I will move my fleet in the south up a bit and bring down my lone ironclad by Freya. If he continues north, I will start following and collect the ships in my cities as I go.