[SPOILERS] Woden and ljubljana like boats

[Woden]

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.

Go for it!

[ljubljana]

Ok, sounds like a plan. I don't think he will hit your capital this turn, not if my ships are actually in range to counterattack. Probably the two most likely outcomes are a) he will repeat the half-move further to the north, then either go for your capital or push on my cities or b) he just did what he did this turn to push my fleet back so he can go for Balder and Heimdall without being bothered by my ships. Both are decent outcomes for us though.

I think his best move was to move 10 spaces north, directly next to my fleet. I would HAVE TO declare war at that point or my fleet dies to a first strike, and I would not do that much damage with a first strike against his GA-backed ironclads. This is not that best move and gives us significantly more room to breathe, so I think I'm pretty happy with it for now. We just have to keep moving your fleet up from the south as mine moves to the north so we don't become too separated to attempt a surround. Then I think we throw everything we have at him from both directions once he commits to a mainland target.

edit: We don't need to kill everything to stop this attack either, just 10 frigate fleets. Once those are gone he has no chance vs our cities. It will take luck and mistakes from him to pull that off I think, but it's not impossible!

[ljubljana]

I should mention about your ships by Australia, I think it's good to look for pillaging opportunities, but I would keep an eye on that two-tile choke south of Marshall Mathers LP too if it's safe to do so. There could be a fight at Fort Miln soon, and you could probably hold it for a few turns and keep them from going south while my ships come down from the north. Not sure if that's worth giving up pillage gold, but I do think it's worth consideration.

[Woden]

Turn 169-Vikings cont'd
I moved my fleet up to Freya and moved the frigate out of the city to help with support bonus...
   

I finished Urbanization and with my policy swap, I dropped Limes in favor of the Oligarchy legacy card. I figure that is probably a bit better than shaving a turn of the few sets of walls I have left to build. 

I also start moving my western fleet southeast to look for pillaging opportunities. I think I should be able to drop Bastions as soon as Steel finishes and I can time the policy swap for T173. I really need an additional policy slot. I could look to build Alhambra at Thor. I could do it fairly quick if I want to chop the city to production death. I have 6 rainforests and 1 forest tile plus another forest on the dyes tile (if I buy it). With Magnus, that should be enough to complete it. The city would lose most of its production tiles (including the mine for the wonder). I really need to see where Conservation is located so I can plant trees. I have marked a location at Frigg for a breathtaking neighborhood but will be a bit before it is built. Need to think about this.

[Woden]

I should mention about your ships by Australia, I think it's good to look for pillaging opportunities, but I would keep an eye on that two-tile choke south of Marshall Mathers LP too if it's safe to do so. There could be a fight at Fort Miln soon, and you could probably hold it for a few turns and keep them from going south while my ships come down from the north. Not sure if that's worth giving up pillage gold, but I do think it's worth consideration.

I don't think roland has Nationalism yet, so his frigates bombard at 55, 72 if they have both city attack promotions. The DS for the city is 83 and he has 3 attacks from the west side. I thin the city is pretty safe for the 4 turns needed to complete Steel...but, yes, I will keep an eye on that passage.

[ljubljana]

Not sure Alhambra is worth it, 710 hammers is worth 9 caravels or 5.6 ironclads, and we are badly short on ships. It depends on what policy card you need, but unless it has a significant military impact I think we'd rather have the ships. Chopping out some of those ships could definitely be a good plan though, especially if Conservation turns out to be soon.

Where is Steel on the tech tree, btw? I am researching Sanitation to crawl towards Industrial now, but if I don't need Industrial for Steel maybe that's incorrect.

[Woden]

Not sure Alhambra is worth it, 710 hammers is worth 9 caravels or 5.6 ironclads, and we are badly short on ships. It depends on what policy card you need, but unless it has a significant military impact I think I'd rather have the ships. Chopping out some of those ships could definitely be a good plan though, especially if Conservation turns out to be soon.

Where is Steel on the tech tree, btw? I am researching Sanitation to crawl towards Industrial now, but if I don't need Industrial for Steel maybe that's incorrect.

It is right after Electricity, so you will need Industrialization to get there.

[ljubljana]

OH important thought - since we are anticipating faith-bought cossacks, we should probably start sailing all your berserkers and bombards and such back to the mainland. Do you think that's feasible? I think it's much more likely to be helpful than trying to attack cities with them, our first priority should be not getting pillaged to death. I think your entire berserker army could probably take on a few cossacks in a fight, especially in the shadow of city fire.

[Woden]

With Alhambra, it gives a military policy slot. I could also go for the Forbidden City for a wild card slot at 920 production. The extra slot would let me run the card that gives extra strength to injured units or the +2 science for renaissance walls or the +30% production on encampment/harbor buildings and build some seaports so I can build fleets directly and at a discount.

I still have to think about it, they are expensive but might be worth it, IDK.

[ljubljana]

Turn 170 - Phoenicia

In the west (east? west relative to us anyways)...



I scouted around a bit, but...I can't find any sign of the Australian fleet. I advance cautiously this turn, about as far as I can without being in range of a possible first strike from the fog from either the west or the east. This turn, I had to scout the west using one of my valuable Embolon fleets, which limited the progress I could make safely, but next turn I will send an unpromoted caravel to the west and will then be able to move south more assertively if I still see no sign of roland.

I really don't like the shape of my line here, by the way - generally convex is bad, concave is good for the purposes of both absorbing first strikes and keeping all the ships in your fleet in range to hit the enemy. It was somewhat forced this turn by limited scouting information, but next turn I will fix it.



Here is my...ahem...daring deploy on the Russian front, where I only just barely had enough movement to keep all my ships out of reach. That does make sense, since the 10-move ironclads can close the 10-space gap I left last turn by a maximum of 5 spaces to not be in range of me, which is exactly how many spaces I can then move in return to stay out of range of them. So perhaps I overstated earlier the ease with which they could simply run me down in open water...without an 11th movement point, they can't trivially do so without risking at least a small first strike. Note also that, because Mitla and Abjad are the just 3 spaces apart from one another, their ZoC blocks off the entire channel between them. If Russia DoWs this turn and moves to spaces north, they actually will not force me to engage, since I can just sail past those two cities and they will be safe until at least one city is taken.

I sent them both DoF offers too. Here's hoping that between my brazen display of cowardice and your assertive positioning in the south, we can convince them that I'm a soft enough target that they should swing north in earnest

An interesting thing to note about this era of warfare is just how underpowered frigates have become against the front-line melee ships. This is my best offensive ranged unit, a GA-boosted LoB fleet in WoR, and it would probably take 5 shots to kill one clad fleet. That's partially the era gap, of course, and partially the extra policy bonus melee units get (Oligarchic Legacy in his case and Twilight Valor in mine) compared to ranged ones. But as bad as this looks, his units will do even worse against yours since yours all have Embolon. I am a bit concerned that he will be able to get a nice surround on you this turn if he goes for you, but I doubt he can kill more than 2 of your fleets with the half of his navy that is in range.

You can also see that that I finally remembered to move Magnus to Abugida now that he is no longer needed for loyalty purposes, albeit too late to boost the incoming walls chop . But at least he will hopefully cause some confusion in Russia about which of my cities has the double-shot Magnus promotion.

Brief domestic observation...



Reyna established this turn, and is returning...a nice 27 GPT! That's totally worth a governor title in this circumstance, and a good incentive to keep sending those juicy TRs to Linear A (or a city with Linear A along the route). Note also the caravel at exactly 80/240 hammers from the magic 32 hpt city that can 3-turn them to the penny without wasting overflow. And at Linear B...



Things aren't this nice elsewhere, with Hieratic slightly below the 3-turn threshold and Cuneiform slightly above the 2-turn one but no way to swap tiles between them, but...this pleases me

I got your coal gift, and this time managed (barely) to remember to save it by starting an ironclad somewhere (spending 7 production at Oasis of Dawn in this case) so it didn't auto-upgrade any of my precious half-finished caravels. I would offer to spend your excess coal on actual ironclad builds if you have any, but it doesn't look like you do. That's probably good, since you can convert coal to ironclads significantly faster than I can.

With Alhambra, it gives a military policy slot. I could also go for the Forbidden City for a wild card slot at 920 production. The extra slot would let me run the card that gives extra strength to injured units or the +2 science for renaissance walls or the +30% production on encampment/harbor buildings and build some seaports so I can build fleets directly and at a discount. 

I still have to think about it, they are expensive but might be worth it, IDK.

Yeah, I don't know...Veterancy is good, but by my count, you will need to build 7 seaports for Alhambra to pay off that way, probably not a good investment at this point when we need every ship we can get by any means necessary. Not sure you have enough Renaissance Walls for the extra beakers to be significant either. Extra strength to injured units could be worth it, but you could have (by my count) 5.6 ironclads for the same hammer investment, and I think the extra units would be more impactful. On the other hand, I think chopping a few forests into clads could be a great idea, especially if Conservation is close. After your +200% hammer multiplier is factored in, you should be able to get a whole clad from each chop. That is almost like faith-buying ships as Indonesia, and probably much more cost-effective .

How many clads do you have under production, by the way? I definitely think every city with decent hammers should be making one now on your end if you have the coal income, an extra wave appearing after he chews through your front line could be a difference-maker. Not much point in more wall upgrades outside of your capital with only 4 turns to go until Steel IMO, and we will need every ship we can get to contain this attack.