[SPOILERS] Woden and ljubljana like boats

[Woden]

Civwiki claims that mountains are ok. I have been burned by them before, but I'd say probably a 90% chance they are right about this one.

Very interesting. What are your plans for your 5-promoted Frigate? Maybe you could sail over to Kaiser's remaining cities and help take out the defenses. I have a berserker gaining vision on the city right now (for as long as he lives).

[ljubljana]

Hmm, my plan was to just use it in the naval battle with Australia, where it is irreplaceably useful for its ability to one-shot frigates from 3 tiles away. Then it would significantly speed up our conquest against roland's Renaissance Walls, since it is one of only 3 Rolling Barrage fleets that I have (one of which is now badly injured) and does not take up a 2-range tile when it fires upon a city center.

I could be swayed to use it against Kaiser, but it makes me pretty nervous. We would have to devote more ships to protecting it from random Russian ships, and I expect the margins in our battle with Australia to be very tight. He may yet turn up with Nationalism and Steam Power in the next few turns, and missing that ship + a few escort ships could be decisive. We can always come back to Kaiser once we beat roland, but if roland can get his feet set, upgrade his navy with Russia's treasury, and boost his city defenses up into the 80s, there will be no easy way back.

edit: Or more succinctly, Kaiser can wait until you have a battleship, but the roland battle is probably just 3 or 4 turns away and I don't want to throw away any of our edge there. You might even want to consider diverting a few more ironclads to that front if you have any extras hanging around, like the ones at Jobs for the Boys.

[Woden]

Hmm, my plan was to just use it in the naval battle with Australia, where it is irreplaceably useful for its ability to one-shot frigates from 3 tiles away. Then it would significantly speed up our conquest against roland's Renaissance Walls, since it is one of only 3 Rolling Barrage fleets that I have (one of which is now badly injured) and does not take up a 2-range tile when it fires upon a city center.

I could be swayed to use it against Kaiser, but it makes me pretty nervous. We would have to devote more ships to protecting it from random Russian ships, and I expect the margins in our battle with Australia to be very tight. He may yet turn up with Nationalism and Steam Power in the next few turns, and missing that ship + a few escort ships could be decisive. We can always come back to Kaiser once we beat roland, but if roland can get his feet set, upgrade his navy with Russia's treasury, and boost his city defenses up into the 80s, there will be no easy way back.

Sounds good. I am sending over the berserker that was guarding the coal tile and he is going to pick up the ram (now useless against roland) and I will smash the walls that way. I just figured we could test it out for a turn if it was close enough.

[ljubljana]

It would probably do good but not amazing damage to the walls. It did roughly 65 damage per shot to roland's walls without the GA, but Kaiser's cities have 10-15 more defensive strength. Probably a 3 shot kill would be my guess. I think the zerk plan is probably better though, especially since with Cossacks inbound their usefulness against roland is about to get much more limited.

[ljubljana]

You are too smart for your own good

That's, uh, more than a little bit ominous

Woden, what is your timetable and tactical plan for attacking Russia with battleships? I imagine with your pillage income you are something like 8-10 turns from Refining, does that seem right? That will beat Russia by just a handful of turns, so you will probably want to mass units at a location where you can upgrade and attack on literally consecutive turns. That means your capital, but that is a potential problem as you have a bunch of IC to the north of Cuneiform where they will be out of GA range. Thoughts?

Also, how many ships do you predict to be able to hit Russia with on the turn after you get Refining? If it is not too many, we may need to wait for destroyers...but that is a less significant tech edge than battleships as they do not benefit from your Industrial GA.

Also also, do you have any spare IC near Australia, eg at Jobs for the Boys, that you can spare to help hold the line in a battle with Australia? I might be paranoid but I think lack of melee ships is the most likely factor to ultimately cost us the battle.

edit: Thoughts on moving Victor to the shipyard city? LoB battleship fleets are no joke, but you would lose Magnus...could still be worth doing though.

[Woden]

You are too smart for your own good

That's, uh, more than a little bit ominous

Woden, what is your timetable and tactical plan for attacking Russia with battleships? I imagine with your pillage income you are something like 8-10 turns from Refining, does that seem right? That will beat Russia by just a handful of turns, so you will probably want to mass units at a location where you can upgrade and attack on literally consecutive turns. That means your capital, but that is a potential problem as you have a bunch of IC to the north of Cuneiform where they will be out of GA range. Thoughts?

I am probably 6 turns from finishing Refining. There is at least 2 mines over by the Russia/Australia border and 2 mines south of Hod that are reachable with my pillaging ironclad. If I can get 3 of the 4, I will finish Refining in 6 turns (each pillage is like 130 science). I actually may need to delay it a turn to get the second fleet frigate out of Thor. I am losing my extra MP for builders so chopping will be slow.

Also, how many ships do you predict to be able to hit Russia with on the turn after you get Refining? If it is not too many, we may need to wait for destroyers...but that is a less significant tech edge than battleships as they do not benefit from your Industrial GA.

I am not sure. But if Russia is not able to pillage any science, I should beat him to Refining by 5 or 6 turns, based on when he finished his last tech. The issue will be that many of the frigates will have just come off the production line, so it will take a few turns to get in on the action. If we can make head way on Australia's northern coast and I can pillage the group of mines there, I might be able to finish Combined Arms around the time Russia finishes Refining.

Also also, do you have any spare IC near Australia, eg at Jobs for the Boys, that you can spare to help hold the line in a battle with Australia? I might be paranoid but I think lack of melee ships is the most likely factor to ultimately cost us the battle.

This I will have to see what the save looks like and work out where my ships are going to be over the next 5 turns. I really should bring everything I can to hit Russia in mass but I might be bale to send one and the new one out of the Japanese capital. I also have the single ironclad on pillaging duty that I can peel off in a few turns, once the lumbermills are pillaged where he currently sits.

edit: Thoughts on moving Victor to the shipyard city? LoB battleship fleets are no joke

I can't have Victor in Thor because I need Magnus to provide Black Marketeer for 8 niter fleets. Otherwise, they cost 40.

[ljubljana]

Okay, sounds good overall. Do you think we should mass north of Cuneiform or at the capital? North of Cuneiform is easier to get to but will lead to a greater timelag between upgrading and attacking, a timelag that will allow Russia to run away to their core and then upgrade when they get there. If we massed to the south of Woden, we can cut them off with battleships immediately and likely have much greater odds of success since they will have nowhere to run to...but I am not sure how feasible it is for you to get all your ships down there in time. You also may not have time to mass at Cuneiform and still get the new GA into position if we are attacking at Refining.

It is okay if you can't commit ships to my Australia attack and want to mass them against Russia instead. Indeed, they will almost certainly be more impactful there. If I run out of caravels against Australia I can just use the bonus movement to run away, and all we will lose is the chance to finish off Australia, not the whole war like we might if we miss the attack timing window.

On balance I think Refining is a much better attack timing than Combined Arms. If we can kill their frigates with battleships in a first strike they will be in huge trouble, whereas by the time we hit CA, they will have battleships themselves (and likely more of them than we will have) and be reasonably able to fight back. But it depends on how many battleships we can get. If we lack the mass to engage we may still lose even if we are the only side with BS.

I would seriously consider NOT merging your frigates/battleships, btw, if you have any single frigates still floating around. They will want to hit frigate fleets in the first few turns of the war, and a single battleship will have a 15 CS edge against them (enough to two-shot) while a fleet will have a 25 CS edge (NOT enough to one-shot). This is one of those rare cases where unmerged ships are probably much more efficient, especially since with 3-range ships there is less of a need to cram more firepower into a confined space. This is the decision I made in the west where I have several unmerged LoB frigates floating around, and it has worked out well as they can 2-shot a caravel while a fleet would fail to one-shot.

[Woden]

I like the idea of not merging units. I might get a CS penalty for not having enough coal but once the battle starts, I should be good as I am bound to lose a few ships. I have one fleet frigate and one single frigate now. One fleet and 4 singles in production right now. I will chop out another one at the new capture in 2 turns and one at the future coal city and another fleet at Thor. I might be able to get a couple more but might run out of time. At a minimum that will give me 3 fleets and 6 single battleships. At most, you can 2 more singles. I will also have at least 6 fleet ironclads and a bunch of single ironclads for the attack. Will it be enough? IDK but I should do better than the last attack.

[ljubljana]

As for coal, you do need to avoid the resource penalty at all costs IMO, even for one turn, as without it your IC are worse than caravels and you will get obliterated. But you can merge a bunch of single IC so you don't have to merge battleships, and you could spend the first few turns of the combat in the bonus coal card (+ Oligarchic Legacy + WoR) and just accept no Press Gangs/Raid for a few turns. You will not be able to count on the coal in captured Australia, though, as Russia will have pillaged it in the next 5 turns for sure. Worst comes to worst, merging battleships is better than taking the CS penalty even though I think it is inefficient overall.

edit: for my part I will contribute 2 fleet IC, 2 fleet caravels, and 1 umerged caravel, which will surely tip the balance in our favor

[Woden]

As for coal, you do need to avoid the resource penalty at all costs IMO, even for one turn, as without it your IC are worse than caravels and you will get obliterated. But you can merge a bunch of single IC so you don't have to merge battleships, and you could spend the few turns of the combat in the bonus coal card (+ Oligarchic Legacy + WoR) and just accept no Press Gangs/Raid for a few turns. You will not be able to count on the coal in captured Australia, though, as Russia will have pillaged it in the next 5 turns for sure. Worst comes to worst, merging battleships is better than taking the CS penalty even though I think it is inefficient overall.

edit: for my part I will contribute 2 fleet IC, 2 fleet caravels, and 1 umerged caravel, which will surely tip the balance in our favor

I won't get the -20CS penalty for having no coal because I have coal. I just get a -1CS penalty for each coal I am short (applied to all coal ships) and I won't be able to heal. I will try and manage it by merging as many ironclads as I can but a penalty of -2 or -3 won't be bad at the beginning if it gets additional kills, especially if I use my single ironclads as meat shields while my stronger units go for kills.

Edit: In addition, if we are fighting near your shore, once I hit destroyers, I can upgrade a bunch of ironclads to free up coal.