[SPOILERS] Woden and ljubljana like boats

[ljubljana]

I don't know that I will sail that far north, probably juuust far enough north so that I could sail 7 tiles and shoot the city next turn. I do want to get in my shot at Rodeo this turn too (which should do 30+ damage with the defense strength drop) so that we can make sure we will one-shot the walls when we go for the city. And naturally I do not want to leave the Dreadnought exposed, so probably the other ships should mostly stay back as well. Maybe it will be better to sail 2 frigates behind your IC though, not sure. That would also help with the problem of there not being enough room for all my frigates inside the melee ship bubble we are planning to make at Rodeo...

[ljubljana]

Do you remember if diplo visibility affects attacks against city centers?



I kind of think it does, but if not, I am wondering if this listening post has outlived its usefulness. It would be cool to move this spy over to LET to try to neutralize the governor, although the success rate is VERY low. Or maybe there is some other creative use we can think of for the spy?

I am also doing the labor-intensive thing again in the Rheic Ocean:



I think my plan is to scout around to the east with caravels, then use three to plug the rest of the strait between your IC and the Cape of Australia. That will keep my ships mostly safe, unless there are hidden privateers that I am not able to find in time.

One more thing:



Bruindane offered a lux trade before you accepted my mercury gift. I ostensibly should reject this as it is now a net positive for them but only neutral for me. But...I actually want to accept anyways, for the following stupid reason: we need their support or at least their indifference to get the emergency passed against Russia, and I would rather them see "deal accepted" on their screen when they open the turn than annoy them by appearing to refuse their lux deal for no reason. Might as well buy a tiny bit of goodwill, since it costs me nothing and the free amenities are not going to turn them into a threat to win. Go ahead and stop me if you think that logic is too stupid for words, though.

[Woden]

I think it does apply to attacking cities. Accept the Chinese offer, keep up the goodwill.

[ljubljana]

Renewed the listening post and you were right, it does apply to cities. And yes, I did accept the Chinese offer.

[ljubljana]

Turn 193 - Phoenicia

Policy cards first. I finally notice that my remaining Cothons, of which there are, uh, four, are bringing in a grand total of 22 gold per turn in the doubling card. Thus, this swap:



Triangle Trade and Conscription together net a cool 50 GPT. I debate dropping Bastions to keep Grand Armee to boost the land military I'm not building, but might start building again soon depending on where those Cossacks go. But, nah, they are likely to take Abugida next turn and Bastions will slow them down just a bit in so doing. It also puts williams' privateers in one-shot range of my city defenses...though I missed said one-shot at Fort Lakton this turn and only got the kill due to coincidentally finishing a new caravel. I will bring back Grand Armee in 3t when I finish Scorched Earth if it seems like more P/S are in order. Otherwise, I guess I can...actually use one of the wildcard slots on something economic? How crazy is that? Well, it didn't even register as an option until I started writing this up (loooong after I locked in the swap above), is how crazy is that.

Next, time for an exercise in scouting. For the first part of our exercise in scouting, in the once-and-future Phoenicia, I have decided that I do not want Russia to continue scouting:



If Russia's caravel fleet goes alllll the way around mine to the north, it can JUST glimpse your two frontmost IC. Otherwise, they will have to kill my caravels, which probably look enough like bait that they won't want to do so. Sadly, I could not find a position that stops that completely - both ships 1NE would do it, but the more southerly ship is at 0/7 MP. Oh well. At least they won't be able to spot how far back your battleships are, which is the important part. Next turn, the caravel in Runic will come out to form a more complete screen, assuming my ships survive the interturn.

In Australia, my pin-placing finger hurts. Here is the "high effort" screenshot at the start of the turn, after I moved the sword down from the north:



Basically, my strategy was to reserve 3 ships to block off the IC-cape axis while using the rest to scout the eastern ocean to verify the absence of privateers, or at least greatly limit their possible locations, to allow me to leave my frigates without shielding against attack from that direction. That means the scouting must come first, so that if I do find privateers, I can either abandon the plan and simply hold formation this turn, or go knock some pirate skulls, depending on how close and how numerous they are.

Ship number 1 is my weakest ship, which moves in a hook to the E, then NE, then NW:



The precise final position is chosen so that the ship is exactly in range of the tile I expect it to occupy in a Rodeo attack next turn, exactly 7 tiles to the W. You can see that I found an Australian caravel, which is annoying in that it might scout me, but not so much so as to cause us to divert our plans. And I dare it to try crashing into my wounded caravel, which will just promote Embolon to fully heal if it does, then later link up with the fresh caravel just produced out of Fort Lakton for a strong unit. Well, strong by my standards, anyways

But no privateers. So far, so good. Next, we can scout NW of this position in another counterclockwise hooking move, with the Elizabeth Bonaventure:



This ship is, of course, exactly 7 tiles away from its position in the Rodeo attack, as well, which is one tile to the W of that of the previous ship.

Ship number 3, the singly-promoted Embolon fleet, goes straight NW, then straight SW, slotting into its final position in the western caravel screen:



With three ships, we manage to minesweep enough of the sea that I feel comfortable committing to an eastwardly-exposed deploy. After cleaning up a few loose tiles and the Australian GP, we take the Dreadnought shot:



Rolled 33 damage, not bad at all. 84 wall health left, which I can easily take down next turn if no Australian IC fleets appear. In fact, it's pretty likely I can completely zero out the health of the city and you can just take it on your turn, should we go that route. But the final deploy is in range of He Was My Brother as well, which will take 2 promoted frigate fleets to take down, plus some luck with them not having units in range:



From the west, it is just as robust to attack as previous deploys, with frigates 2 tiles back from the caravel line to avoid sniping, and with 2 caravel kills needed to remove the GA. From the east, it is not perfectly safe, but williams would have to have a bunch of (8-move) privateers on very specific tiles in order to punish me. The Dreadnought in particular should be safe - williams can hit it once from the other side of the cape, and there is also one tile (2E of its position) reachable by a privateer in the fog. I do not think 2 privateers will do more than half its health...and they actually will promote it to level 6 (!) if they try.

edit: It will be a 2 turn commitment to go for He Was My Brother, since I have to land the sword next turn, then zero out the health with a ship on the following turn and attack. I guess I could take off all the health next turn and land, then leave one frigate behind to finish off the health while the rest go for Rodeo the turn after. But that frigate would then be pretty vulnerable to sniping, as is the sword itself.

I am actually also a bit worried that my sword will die attacking the city...unfortunately I have seen that happen before, when I used a full-health warrior to try to take a 0-health city of similar defensive strength in SP. If it were full health, there would be no problem, but redlined I think it is possible that it will die. Where did that damage come from, I wonder? Did it come from taking Writing on the Wall from TAD, the first time?? And to think I didn't take the time to heal this unit because I thought its health could not possibly matter...

[Woden]

Crazy idea alert! Looking at your trade routes, it looks like the routes don't end immediately if the lighthouse is pillaged. I suspect you won't be able to create a new route once the route ends but, right now, you are benefiting from the routes. What if I repair my pillaged harbors and lighthouses, build traders, and start routes from Thor. Each route will be worth +6 production. It would give Russia more gold but will also speed up the Manhattan Project and nukes. I will have to see how many routes are available at Thor but I think I have 5 or 6 pillaged lighthouses, which would be worth 30-36 production per turn. I think I will have to see what routes will potentially end soon because if I get a bunch of routes ending soon enough, it won't be worth it, but it might be. Just a thought.

[ljubljana]

Interesting! Would those be overland routes or overseas? My main concern is that, if we are not going to be able to protect the lighthouses from pillagers, I don't really think we will be able to protect the traders either. That is especially true if Russia's Cossacks are indeed coming south now as I suspect. But is it possible to create a safe zone where you can safely run ocean traders away from both Cossacks and privateers? I don't know, but I think it's worth considering. You also may not have to repair the lighthouses if Russia starts getting more of your traders over the next few turns... But 40 hammers per turn would shave probably 10t off your Manhattan Project time and maybe 8t more off your first nuke time, so it is probably worth giving Russia a significant amount of gold and making major sacrifices to make that happen. We are getting closer to the point where nuke numbers matter more than anything else, and, well, gold cannot buy Russia more nukes... That is, as long as we don't get overwhelmed at sea in the meantime.

edit: If we do this, maybe you should time your lighthouse repairs to all finish on the same turn so you have more time with lighthouses up. The traders in production will get cancelled if the lighthouses get re-pillaged which would be a big setback. Although, did you say you had extra traders currently? That would certainly ease the burden a bit.

[Woden]

I do not have any extra traders, I am actually building a new one at the English capital, due in 2 turns. I think most would be traveling in the western ocean or over land. We may be able to chase Russia away from our shores in the coming turns. That might be enough to illicit a concession but if it is not, it might be worth strategically repairing harbors and lighthouses. I have actually started repairing harbors at my former city state cities in the east and will bring them to 1 turn to complete. I have to look and see if there are others I can repair and maybe keep a few ships around to prevent future pillages.

[ljubljana]

I think that's a good plan, let's bring things to 1t to completion and see where Russia's ships and Cossacks go. Worst-case, you can just send TRs along whichever available routes are furthest from the pillagers when the time comes (probably in 8t or so, whenever you get Fission). We do not need to keep them running for the full length of the TR, just long enough to accelerate nukes.

We might want to take a look at Russia's cities to try to figure out how many turns the MP and first nuke will take them. My suspicion is that they will beat us with just natural production thanks to Work Ethic, but with enough TRs you will be able to catch them. Then it will come down to trying to nuke and raze their best cities before they can make enough nukes to hit us back. We should also be on the lookout soon for their military engineers headed to former Phoenicia, which looks like the only Russian territory in range of your core. Luckily they can't just buy them there directly for lack of an upgraded Encampment district.

I'm not too optimistic about chasing them away from our shores unless we can get a first strike on them in the next few turns. They probably have a sizeable edge in total number of modern ships after their last set of upgrades, which will become an enormous edge once their oil is online and they upgrade 12 sub fleets. But if we can get a nuke around the same time they do, that plus Fascism plus them not having destroyers will make things look better, especially if they underestimate your timings and leave a bunch of battleships clustered together for you to nuke. Or maybe williams will make a tactical error and let us hit him before the subs come online, although I think that's not too likely given his very cautious approach to even my much smaller and outdated fleet at the outset of the war.

edit: Are you planning to send out another IC fleet scout this turn? I think you might want to in order to avoid getting first striked once you start moving up destroyers. We might not have been in position to avenge the last one due to the coal shortage, but this one will be moving out right as we get destroyers so we can pounce if he kills it, as it will only need to be 5 tiles or so ahead of your fleet to effectively scout for first strikers.

edit2: Wow, super fast turn from suboptimal! I guess we will have to discuss Rodeo vs HWMB a bit sooner than I expected...

[Woden]

Turn 193-Vikings start
Suboptimal was quick to get his turn done once williams482 played. Open the save to find we will not have any supply issues with uranium. I have 6 sources in my empire and 3 are already hooked up (2 under cities/districts and 1 mined). For some reason, I have 12 in the bank but only making 9 per turn. In the north...
   

Russia killed my pillaging ironclad but left your caravels alone. He did take Abugida and will probably hit W(O)din next turn or sail up to face me, not sure. I will scout out his line with an ironclad, maybe attack the caravel? He also looks to be sending his Cossacks to the south to pillage me, might bring my General south. 

Over by Australia...
   

Nothing new really. I show the extent of my northern most ironclad. I will see if I can get into the configuration you proposed last turn or if you have anything new, let me know. It will be a few hours before I play the turn. I am currently getting a -3 penalty for lack of coal but am missing 5. It will be better next turn, as Russia left the harbor at Oracle Bones un-pillaged and I can get an extra upgrade from it. 

Do you need more niter? I am full and can send you 30 more and send you more after that if you need it.