[SPOILERS] Woden and ljubljana like boats

[ljubljana]

Agree re the Cossacks, and yeah the loss of Abugida is expected. It will probably eventually flip back to you, too, which is a nice plus. I say hang back and upgrade, scout with an IC, and yeah, hitting the caravel with the scout IC is not a bad idea if you get good odds, he probably is not in position to punish us for killing it and it is a better scout than the GWs by themselves.

Russia's milpower went down this turn even though all I killed was a privateer, and even though he upgraded a ton of units. What's going on? That's super suspicious...could they be running science projects or something? Is there some way to stay in the +beakers card at the end of the turn? You had a nice 50bpt advantage over them with it and it would probably save a turn on nukes. Might be worth running science projects of your own for a bit too if it shaves a turn off of Fission.

I would love more niter, I am making quads in a few cities and I don't think we will ever have the gold to upgrade them. May as well do so in the production queue.

All your IC have 8 movement right? We actually have some options since we could either block off the strait completely like we did this turn or do the formation I proposed earlier. The latter is probably better though as my scouting caravels in the east can still help out. I will work on a map of proposed positions and send it along in the next few hours.

I do think going for Rodeo now is best as HWMB seems dicey, we will be up a creek if he finds a way to snipe my sword or it dies attacking the city. We might get counterattacked but it will only get worse the longer we wait. I am confident I can take out the Rodeo walls and am hopeful about zeroing out the city health as well. Idk what roland is doing in LET with no governor, but that's great news for us as well.

No Russian oil yet, right? I don't see any suspicious new cities in the southern tundra on the minimap, for now at least... And how is Russia's uranium supply? That one could be a major break for us if he has to save up for 3-5 turns for every nuke he starts.

[ljubljana]

Something to think about: if it wasn't WC this turn, I'd say we kill the caravel with my scouts and move up just a little bit to be in range if he tries to retake Buyniy next turn. But because of the WC, he will get to see everything that the caravel can see on the interturn But it may still be worth killing the southern musician on your turn and moving your southern ships east exactly two tiles to stay just out of sight of the caravel. That way if his positioning at Buyniy next turn is sufficiently careless, you may still get a first strike. It is possible he will be able to reach you from the fog if you do that, but hopefully not too likely as most of his battleships should be around Abugida... I'll leave the risk/reward calculus there up to you, though.

edit: also depends on if the GA is boosting the battleships at Abugida. If not, the odds of him having a large force waiting for you just out of sight are significantly higher.

[ljubljana]

Here are some options. Option 1, we essentially replicate the formation from earlier but a bit further forward to help shield the pearls frigate:



Option 2, we assume no attack from the east and try to block the strait:



Option 1 looks a bit safer for your IC in the yellow (ICy), which might not be able to take 4 privateer shots in the other picture. Option 2 looks a bit safer for my frigates, which are less prone to sniping. That is, unless there is an attack from the east/north, in which case option 1 is better for sure. Both options have my GA on the pearls at end of turn, which is quite far forward and makes me nervous. I would like to swap one of the western caravels with the frigate fleet on the GA tile, but I need a frigate there to actually shoot at the city...

edit: In option 1, I could move the GA 1 NW of the pearls and stick a caravel there, I guess. Is that better? It would be in privateer range but he would at least have to kill 2 caravel fleets to get to it, more than I can say about the pearls position. Or in option 2, I can move a caravel onto the same tile 1NW of the pearls and be even safer since there is no single caravel williams can kill that would open up more than 3 attacks on that tile.

[ljubljana]

Updated option 1 and option 2 with safer GA positions (gold C):

Option 1:



Option 2:



I was leaning toward option 1 until I realized option 2 has better GA safety, but now I could go either way or might even think option 2 looks slightly better...let me know what you think?

If they are hiding battleships down there they will laugh us out of the room either way...but I think we would have seen them upgrade via your spy at Borodino, right?

[Woden]

I can probably take out the caravel by swinging my battleship NE of Runic and have the ironclads I don't upgrade form a defensive line in front of them. I can then clear out both GAs with the ironclad that kills the caravel.

As for Australia, I kind of like option 2. It will dare him to go after the injured IC, which will limit his ability to sail around and hit your frigates. I think saving your frigates is more important. I can see with Option 1, him hitting the center and them going after your frigates to take them out of the fight as a counterattack. I would also move the yellow C up to support your other caravels. My injured IC is 1 hit from a promotion, so hopefully it can take a few hits and survive. We are 2 more turns until the destroyer can get into action (upgrade this turn on the pearls, move up next turn, and then should be able to attack the following turn. That will be helpful if the action continues.

[Woden]

As for science, if we can take Rodeo that will open up Russia's core for pillaging. His capital has a bunch of juicy targets. We just need to push south once we take Rodeo. There is also a bunch of traders down there for gold. I am contemplating dropping the extra coal card for Total War but I think I will still be short a few coal. I could use the trader gold for more un-discounted upgrades in the near future. Need to think on it.

[ljubljana]

If you hit the caravel with a battleship, though, williams will get a popup saying so and will know how far forward we are (since nobody would ever scout with a battleship). If we want to be sneaky, I think we have to only hit the caravel with the scouting IC and then try kill with my caravels and stuff on my turn and stay far enough back to be just out of his vision with your ships. It probably won't work, but he only needs to guess wrong on our position by a few tiles to give you a workable attack vector. Or we can not move up at all and have this be a totally safe upgrade turn, that has a certain appeal as well.

And ok, I'm sold on option 2 if you are then.

I'd say probably best to keep the coal card if you are still short. Russia may yet find more places to pillage (eg making a run at MMLP again) which would mess us up badly. But it would be amazing if we managed to pillage those Russia-Australia TRs, so he probably has a bunch of ships there and will not let us...

[Woden]

I posted something in the tech thread reminding of the rule about voting against someone your partner has a DoF with, i.e. China voting against Russia even though Indonesia has a friendship with Russia. It will hurt our vote, since I don't know if you are part of the Russia emergency since it was not an option for you to propose. I did check and it doesn't seem like anybody else proposed anything, so we may have just locked out anything against us, which is a huge win, even if we lose the Russia emergency.

[ljubljana]

Tur 193 World Congress - Phoenicia

Yeah, I can't vote on it:



Huh? I have no idea why not. Maybe because my own, stupid proposal locked me out of it? I don't understand...

Then I went and made things worse by closing out of the WC screen and re-opening it after allocating my votes but before pressing submit, leading to this fun screen:



Preeeetty sure I shouldn't be able to see what others proposed if I am not eligible to vote. Also, that -195 turns is pretty sus. I also have no option to submit anymore, just to end my turn. What do you think I should do? I don't care if my one vote on the pointless resolution gets counted or not, but this screen looks kinda bugged out and I don't want to pass on a corrupted save, if I have caused the game to glitch out or something...

I think I'll try saving and reloading to see if that fixes things... I can't think of any circumstances in which that would be against RB rules/norms...

edit: With my inexplicable inability to vote for the emergency and China being a -1 vote, it is going to fail. But I guess that's fine if Russia does not get one against you either.

[Woden]

Yah, reload save and try again. Your computer doesn't seem to like the WC screen.

Edit: Or my computer is sending you some F'ed up saves.