[SPOILERS] Woden and ljubljana like boats

[Woden]

I would even put money on him not playing tonight.

This is most likely confirmation bias but for whatever reason, whenever I post this statement, suboptimal always seems to play!

[Woden]

Turn 186-Vikings start
Start of with the big news...
   

I only have 1 source of oil within my current borders but 3 other land sources are easily obtained with tile purchases. Surprising again, like coal England got screwed out of land oil. The only land sources for that team is by Japan's cities. China has a few sources in the tundra and I can't see any by Indonesia. Russia has 1 land source I can see and Australia one source at The Low-End Theory. They also got screwed on water oil, with only 1 source in a lake in the middle of Russia and one source off the coast of SFFB. There is a fairly large chuck of tundra not defogged, so they could have more. China was lucky with ocean oil, having 6 sources near them but none are within their current borders and 1 is unreachable because of how Connor Goldson is settled. You really got screwed with only 1 water source NE of the coal at Buyniy. 

Here is the SW...
   

You can see 2 oils that are easily reached in my desert. I am going to buy those tiles this turn. Russia left 2 privateers near traders this turn and both will be dead. I will kill the northern one with a lone ironclad out of Loki and the one by Freyr will die with a juiced city attack thanks to the fleet battleships I will upgrade. If the northern one is a trap, good, it will bring his ships in range if my fleet and I can wipe them out. Not sure what to think about the southern one, it does have a +2 support bonus, so there is at least 1 more ship down there. That is probably the group that pillaged Freya. 

In the north...
   

No advance by Russia and in fact it looks like he pulled back a little bit. he did land a bunch of Cossacks though. I will see if my field cannon can land and fire at something but I doubt it. The one plains tile SE of you P&S would work and I should be able to take a good chunk out of the corps Cossack. Not sure if I can reach any of the others. 

Over by Australia...
   

Looks like we had good timing and no counterattack. I would be weary of pushing around the peninsula if I were you. Russia could be waiting for you with a group of ships. Might be better to hit The Low-End Theory and Illmatic and wait for my ironclads to use as targets. That way, they attack me and you destroy with your frigates. I will start sailing them over this turn and will take 4 to get to where they can reach that point. We can probably do it earlier with the single ironclad I have there now and the new one out of Fort Miln. But while we wait, hit The Low-End Theory for the oil. Also, notice that Russia is going to pillage one of my coal sources at TMMLP. I will hook it back up once my berserkers are healed and then protect it with them. 

Finally...
   

Nelson will be waiting for you on your turn! You are the only player with enough points to get him. But Russia will have a huge lead on the next GA; he already has 332 points!

[ljubljana]

Holy crap, that's a lot of Cossacks! Luckily for us, their positions are fairly uncoordinated and they will take city range strikes from just about all my cities. If you can manage to hit the corps cossack with your field cannon, I can possibly kill with my P/S and this position will look a bit more even.

Good news on Nelson! I guess you were right and China missed the boat due to weird Civ6 mechanics. Nice call there!

And ouch, looks like roland finally has IC access based on that defense strength at The Low-End Theory, up 11 points from 2 turns ago. Not sure what the best path forward is from here - with roland having neatly killed two of my best city-cracking ships, I will struggle to so much as scratch its defenses, and will take damage that cannot easily be healed off for lack of ports in this region...

[Woden]

I brought the corps Cossack down to what looks to be around 10 health. As for Australia having an ironclad, I am not sure. His capital is only at 76 CS with medieval walls and 3 districts and a caravel inside. Might just have a fleet caravel inside plus Renaissance walls. Also, the island with the former Indonesian cities only have a DS of 52...so no ironclad yet.

Russia also finished a tech this turn and has a little bit of Aluminum. Five more turns until he has battleships.

[Woden]

Turn 186-Vikings cont.
I upgraded 9 battleships and 3 fleet battleships...
   

In total, I have 34 coal requiring ships and make 24 with 8 mines. I will be 2 each turn but probably 6 short when Russia pillages my coal mine at TMMLP. I will need to get that fixed ASAP and will dispatch a builder next turn. I will have enough next turn for no shortage but the turn after I will be short. I might want to consider merging a few ships. I have 8 single ironclads and 9 single battleships. I want to keep as many units as possible but it might be better overall to minimize the lack of coal penalty. I will have to think about it. 

Over in our western sea, I had a few of my ironclads do some sweeping in the northern half and found no ships...
   

I placed some pins. I didn't find anything, so no large group of ships but there still might be a lone one in a pocket I didn't pass. Both ironclads did an arching path to cover as much ground as possible and I did the same over by England. Next turn, I will push up the straight by Geneva with this guy...
   

And head towards the pin I have set to see if there are units up there. Then, I will position my boats to counter attack if this guy dies. I should be able to get a bunch if dies, as they won't be able to move after an attack. 

On the tech tree...
   

We have found our next 4 targets for research. First, Combined Arms for destroyers. Then, Flight for planes. Next, Nuclear Fission for nukes and Rocketry for ICBMs. No need for anything else, since if I can get to nukes before him by any kind of lead, he should concede. I am going to have to beef up production at Thor, as it will be my best city to get the Manhattan Project done in and at 1,000 it will take a while to complete.

In the southern sea...
   

These ironclads are heading elsewhere as the area is pillaged out. I am not decided yet if they go to the Australian front or head towards England in hopes of intercepting Russia if he decides to send his privateer fleet on a pillaging run. That might actually be the best use of them. I can bring the single up to Australia and the fleets go over to England. He does have a GA I briefly spotted as my GG was heading over to Japan's last stronghold. 

Finally, it cost 610 but I had to do it and buy a policy swap...
   

I needed Drill Manuals for the extra coal and I slotted the Oligarchy Legacy Card for battle. This will be the set up until I finish Combined Arms and can drop the extra coal card. A pillaged mine at Australia did help with gold.

[ljubljana]

We are likely in for trouble at The Low-End Theory:



This is my best unit against Australia's capital doing what looks to be something like 20 damage. I only have 2 frigate fleets with both anti-city promotions, since roland alertly killed my third, and one of those fleets is badly injured right now. So it looks like this city would be a grueling 4 or 5 turn siege with just Medieval Walls - at LET we are looking at a 6 or 7 turn siege, I would guess, which will leave most of my frigates injured from city fire by the time it completes. Worse, in a few turns, they will indeed get an IC fleet and the city defenses will jump into the 90s, probably halfway through our attempt to take out the walls.

If we decide that this city is not an effective use of time or frigate health (which I could go either way on), one alternative is to push past the peninsula ASAP to hit a target with just 2 layers of walls, which would then let us pour into Russia's core and pillage their harbors and trade routes. That would alleviate the financial collapse that is starting to loom large with Russia getting more and more of our TRs, and could help stem the tide of Russian reinforcements by camping their production facilities. Another option is to hold my frigates back this turn and try to kill those Cossacks that they are using against your coal, which might be the only way for you to get it safely hooked up in time to fight Russia.

What do you think?

As for merging ships, I think you are going to have to do so unfortunately, and probably soon since the ships need to be merged the turn before Russia moves into range. I don't think having a few more unmerged ships is worth taking a penalty on all your ships, maybe even a -1 penalty but definitely not -2 or -3 IMO. Russia is already getting a +7 against your front-line ships due to the promotion advantage, we can ill afford allowing it to compound into a +10 or more. This is especially the case because, as far as we know, any strength penalty you might have at the start of Russia's turn will probably remain in place for all of their turn even after they kill your ships, and it only takes 1 turn of combat at a big strength penalty for them to inflict major damage to your fleet. My thoughts are that it is probably best to merge IC until you are under the penalty. Not sure about battleships as it would be painful to reduce the ranged striking power of your fleet like that...but it might be necessary if the alternative is to let Russia get in a big attack into the penalty.

As for early nukes, well, that is an interesting roll of the tech shuffle dice. How are you planning to deliver them, via silos? It seems like the other option is by bomber which requires a ton of additional researches, but the silos require getting a military engineer very close to Russian territory (so, to the hopefully-by-then-former Australia). If we are going for silos, I think you will need to start on the engineer(s) fairly soon so it has time to make it to Australia, and we also may want to skip Flight research since I don't think it is directly required for nukes via silos. Finally, what is your most productive city? If you are going to need 20 turns to build the Manhattan Project, we may need to think about doing Nuclear Fission before Combined Arms (!) to avoid wasting our research advantage by having cities sit idle making things that are not nukes.

[Woden]

If you can hit the Cossacks this turn, that might be the best play right now. I would hate for you to run into a wall of privateers on the other side of the peninsula. He has to be bring up ships now and there might not be much there right now but they might be there next turn. I think the better play in that area is to have me bring a few ironclads as targets so you can do maximum damage on your turn.

For nukes, we will need uranium that is revealed at Combined Arms and will need to stockpile it while working on the Manhattan Project. I do still have about 4 jungles I can chop out at Thor (which is probably my best city) to help speed it along and then we can plant trees by the time we can start the project. I should also plan on a few English cities for maximum production to help build nukes. Bypassing Flight might be the way to go, as I forgot bombers are not until Advanced Flight. Missiles will be the way to go and I will need something 20 tiles from his capital and core. I think Hod might be that close but will have to double check.

Edit: Maybe to save some science, I research Combined Arms down to the boost and switch to Nuclear Fission while I wait for Mobilization to finish. That would save about 500 beakers.

[Woden]

I would even put money on him not playing tonight.

This is most likely confirmation bias but for whatever reason, whenever I post this statement, suboptimal always seems to play!

Just be careful not to get bitten by Murphy's law which clearly states that if you wash your car it will rain, but if you wash your car to make it rain that will instead cause a draught.

True! All I know is that I am not going to post "great turn pace" in the tech thread again because it went south the following turn.

[ljubljana]

Turn 187, Part 1 - Phoenicia

Managed to inflict some pain against the fresh wave of Cossacks:



Trying to decide on taking the highlighted attack, which seems to be very close to a 50% chance to kill (so, a 6/12 chance to kill). It will disrupt my defensive positioning and cost me my fortify bonus, though, and if I fail then I will likely knock this unit into promotion range. Still, the attack should at least prevent it from hitting your field cannon too hard. Let me know if you have any opinions.

For nukes, we will need uranium that is revealed at Combined Arms and will need to stockpile it while working on the Manhattan Project. I do still have about 4 jungles I can chop out at Thor (which is probably my best city) to help speed it along and then we can plant trees by the time we can start the project. I should also plan on a few English cities for maximum production to help build nukes. Bypassing Flight might be the way to go, as I forgot bombers are not until Advanced Flight. Missiles will be the way to go and I will need something 20 tiles from his capital and core. I think Hod might be that close but will have to double check.

Where do you get 20 tiles for the missile silo range? Civwiki says the range is 12 tiles, in which case none of our cities are in range and we would need a base in Western Australia to reach them. But that might have been changed in a patch, or civwiki could just be wrong...

edit: As for my ships, I can't hit the Cossacks this turn, and would need to pull back a bit to have a chance of hitting them next turn. But I am not sure we can keep the coal mine up without frigate support, so could be a good play. I am fine with waiting for IC support before pushing west of the peninsula, but I do think that the time when there is least likely to be privateers waiting for us over there is right now, before Russia has had a chance to scramble their defenses. The longer we wait, the more privateers they can build there, and they can mass privateers much more quickly than you can mass IC. Though, I agree that this does not mean we should definitely push now if we think it might be an overextension. IDK, I might need to think on this one...

How many IC do you think you will send over there? If it is just the one from Fort Miln, I'm not sure it will make too much of a difference, but if you are sending the ones from the southern bay too there is more of an argument for waiting. I do agree that there is an argument for spending those IC on the front lines vs Russia with the rest of your fleet too though...

[Woden]

Maybe it would be best to bring your ships west. You are right, now there will be fewer ships than in the future but I really would prefer using an ironclad or 2 as bait. It will take a bunch of privateers to kill 1 and then you can cause maximum damage. It does no good for you to sail around the "Horn of Australia" to only find half your ships gone the next turn. I will have 2 singles that can move that way in a few turns and can bring fleet (the single in the south merged with the new one out of MBDF. I should also merge the one out of Fort Miln with the one I pillaged with last turn to save on coal. I think the 3 other fleets in the south should head towards England just in case Russia brings its fleet of privateers over that way. He might be waiting for me to push north with my fleet so they are occupied elsewhere and his ships will be free to pillage the English coast.

Edit: If you do decide to go around the Horn of Australia, hug the coast to minimize attack vectors.