[PB59 Amicalola] The Vespertine Hour(s)

[Amicalola]

T230
Thanks for the information Grillo.  

War - North

SD spent his income last turn on EP, which was a smart way to remove our city vision and especially our city investigation. Some spare cavalry scout and capture undefended Orang Pendek, Jersey Devil, and Suzhou. 





We identify the Chinese fleet, which is huge.


17 Frigates and 16 Privateers. The crazy thing is, I think this could actually take out our 6 (slightly injured) destroyers if we advance at sea. But then I wondered if that was actually true, and tested it:


Above is the simulation I ran. Below are the results:


In written summary, we lost the combat zero times in the sim, and rarely lost even a single ship. Ok, I guess my instinct was wrong there.  So we also capture Maoming:


I parked the fleet outside the city, on the fish. Hopefully SD will ram everything into us and lose it all. Also note that I could have just hidden the ships in Maoming anyway, so I've no idea what I was thinking before I ran that sim. 

Annoyingly, Shanghai's culture blocked my land tanks from advancing past Suzhou this turn, so I'm considering healing there next turn with them. 



Finally, I landed a stack of tanks and infantry on the cow tile here:


Either Superdeath won't attack them and it's a nice fork, or he will. According to another sim, an attack on his end kills maybe 1-3 units of ours, but wipes his entire army and makes the rest of the war a cakewalk. I'm pretty happy with either result. 

War - South

Our hooking transports discover that MarbleCity has been heavily garrisoned. 


Amazingly, there are 16 units garrisoning, and I have exactly 16 potential attackers. I'd need to win every fight, but they're all 99% odds or better. I decide to take the risk...

 
We win all 16 combats! Thank goodness that knight wasn't inside the city. 

Undefended Kunming and WheatCity are captured too. The stack advances up towards GoldCity. 


I also discovered here that workers can build railroads inside enemy territory! That's going to be very helpful.



This stack could have threatened and possibly even recaptured Taipei.


Luckily I had two bombers in Grassman that were just in range, and I also had kept another transport in range just in case, which unloaded some more infantry.


Bombers are really unfair. I think the city holds now. Couldn't be bothered with yet more sims, but based on the cow one this should be fine. 

Domestic

Another city management snapshot. Karvel is a model city for glorious republic. It was a filler founded without food resources ~15 turns ago. It is ready to start contributing next turn.  



Spreading Big Cereal on this continent is really tricky. 


It's only half as fast to build executives in Homeland cities and ship/airlift them over, but right now it's the only way. Cities need at least a Forge, Granary, Factory, Coal Plant and Courthouse to start whipping executives themselves, and that's taking ages in even Superdeath's territory. Getting a few dedicated executive cities over here is a huge priority; I'm currently thinking All Due Respect, Fossil, and Space3 to start with, since they're the first cities to get those buildings. Sweet Dreams (I remembered, Ginger!) can also chip in, but I'd prefer to grow that on a levee with the other 'capital' spots like Unison and Constellation if possible. 

I didn't start planning the Piccadilly war yet in earnest, but it only takes 5 turns to get from my planned naval stack/base to his capital, so I have a little more time there. It is a priority, though. 

Here are the demographics:


Mine aren't great, other than food and power. For anyone wondering, literally half (55/111) of my cities are currently in resistance and contributing nothing. So pretty soon they'll start being useful (hopefully - it depends on those Cereal spreads), but for now they're just a big scary number to make the other players worried.   It is quite fun that the three of us are playing such different games though; Piccadilly on GNP, Miguelito on MFG, and myself on Food. My GNP at this point is just dreadful.

Civac is not only willing to help take down Piccadilly, but also traded me one of each grain resource for 15 gpt. It takes the sting out of Charriu's cancellations a little. Civac is the best. Yay civac!

[CFCJesterFool]

Tanks and bombers are so fun to use. They are a go to strat playing deity on non-pangea maps. Congratulations on 111 cities! 

[Hitru]

Using wooden ships vs oil baset navy is essentially not possible. You would need huge navy to sink even one destroyer

[Amicalola]

Using wooden ships vs oil baset navy is essentially not possible. You would need huge navy to sink even one destroyer

It sure seems that way. Although I've realised since that (I think?) the transport will not defend, as it is loaded. In the sim without the transport, Superdeath has a little over ~1% odds to win the fight. Very low (still fairly unlikely to kill even one ship), but enough to make me fairly paranoid. 

Tanks and bombers are so fun to use. They are a go to strat playing deity on non-pangea maps. Congratulations on 111 cities!  

Yeah, the bombers especially are really fun so far. I think when (if?) the Cairo invasion happens, the bombers/tanks combo will be really interesting to try on someone of roughly equal tech level. I've never played Singleplayer above Emperor, so that's really interesting to know. And thanks!

[Amicalola]

T231 Part One - SuperZoi's Last Stand
The destroyers took a pounding, as Superdeath/Donovan sent their entire fleet in. It turns out that the transport did not defend, so my sim was innacurate as feared. The results in game...


 LET'S GO.   Not a single destroyer lost, and none above 9 strength left. Talk about threading the needle.

And this wasn't the only last stand of the turn. Here's what was left of the DZ/SD military as I opened the turn:


No, really, that's it; this is after I used airships to scout. It turns out they attacked my land stacks too, with virtually everything they had (more combats off-screen). 


With those land attacks, we lost... nothing. Again!  Lots of injured units, but nothing else.  


So I waltzed through 8 of their 10 cities, nearly all of which were completely undefended (including the HE city!). Here's the map when I was finished.


Beijing and Shandong are all that's left, 4 turns since the war began. They should fall next turn (tanks/transports moved into position). I can't quite believe this, but it looks like we're about to pull off this entire invasion (39 cities!) in 5 turns, without losing a single unit.

Now I need to (very quickly) figure out whether those units should just keep pushing straight into Lazteuq, or if they can somehow be re-purposed into the Piccadilly or Cairo invasions....

[Ginger]

New song city name idea: Paint it black green

[Amicalola]

T231 Part Two - Piccadilly Panic
We will be attacking Piccadilly in 8 turns. We can hit the current capital in 9. Piccadilly only needs Medicine and Ecology as far as 'Spaceship techs,' so he's really quite close - it totally snuck up on me while all the western wars were going on. It will either take him three or four turns to get them, probably three; Piccadilly's tech pace is just absurd. 

Not sure how long he needs after every tech finishes, but if he's putting the micro work in it can't be more than 2-4, I think. So the spaceship will almost certainly be launched by the time I arrive, unless I send a significantly smaller stack. Even then, it may be too late. I spent so long thinking 'Mig and I can probably stop Piccadilly' that I may have made it untrue. Hopefully nukes will be able to help, because what I have currently is not going to cut it. 


Behold, my mighty fleet. Tremble, Piccadilly, and despair. 

I found this thread on CivFanatics:


So I suppose the clock around 15 turns, with 4-6 to finish the ship, and 11 to arrive (assuming he builds all parts, which he surely will).

I'm considering killing Piccadilly's privateer here, and advancing early with those meagre transports from the first picture. They would arrive much sooner, albeit not really able to do anything. If you can't tell, I'm kinda panicking at the realisation of how close he is to winning. 


I could offer a ceasefire. I guess the question is whether or not he already knows I'm coming for him. If he does, declaring early and advancing with a small stack early is probably good, since it might psych him out. If he doesn't, then losing the element of surprise would be very, very bad. It's yet another dilemma in a game full of them. I suppose one other advantage would be closing borders a turn earlier, which could theoretically slow him down a turn (seems very, very unlikely though). There is also the question of whether advancing piecemeal is a good idea (hint: it almost certainly isn't). It also depends on how much I trust Miguelito to get off his ass - he and I are in a serious prisoners dilemma here. I'll update here again if I decide to go for it, because I have to finish my turn later tonight anyway. 

One thing is for sure. The Western Continent troops won't be arriving in time to stop Piccadilly. They will need to either push into Lazteuq (with yet more reinforcements from... somewhere?) or come back to help fight Cairo.


Yeah, putting my units across three separate fronts feels almost guaranteed to end in disaster. Which means I need to cut something. But I need to do all three things! I need more time, dammit, more time! 



At home, happiness is starting to become a problem.


Numbers like '+10 whip unhappy' are getting pretty common. Honestly, I'm amazed I've been able to control it so far - I haven't had a single unhappy city in over 10 turns! But the unhappiness is starting to get out of control, for sure. It's a bit of a vicious cycle; I want to whip cities that are unhappy because it makes them happy again, but in the long-term the problem is just getting worse. Not really sure what to do about this, other than "have rabid, raging citizens" by the end of the game.   Declaring war on Piccadilly/Frozen also loses me two happiness from Musicals/Movies, which is going to suck. That's when riots start in most of the bigger cities. But I suppose that's just part of the challenge with a Kremlin-based economy. 

And thanks Ginger, will do! What happened to your brackets?

[Amicalola]

T231 Part Three - Bad News
Civac did not respond to my 'Piccadilly war' confirmation offer, with the same timeframe as the earlier one. Nor did he accept my payment for cancelling deals. I had a crack at Cairo and Charriu as well, but Civac was the only one I thought had a reasonable chance of responding. Looks like it is just down to Miguelito and myself, then.

[El Grillo]

What good is a happy citizen anyway? It's not like that much of your output is coming from working tiles. Embrace the darkness and become the ruler your people deserve

...I am not entirely sure how seriously I endorse the above statement.

[Hitru]

Well, as long as corporation alone is enough to grow from 1 to 2 pop in 1 turn and you can whip what you need with 1 pop I don't see the problem with letting some ( quite many ) cities be whipped to the ground