[SPOILERS] Woden and ljubljana like boats

[ljubljana]

Agreed about having the stronger navy by Australia, for now. I definitely think we kill any privateers we can find in range next turn, and maybe move up into range if we see privateers just out of range and think we can force them into a fight (like if they are at Borodino). But if they are all in the west there is little we can do to kill them directly as I don't think we can take a first strike that includes a bunch of subs. Probably what we do then is move the ships down to TCD, scout out 7-8 tiles away from the main navy with destroyers while we work on the city, and assume he won't come into first strike range with his subs. At that point our advance will have stalled, yes, but it will have stalled with us in possession of the seas by his capital and we can pillage that area pretty badly and try to finish off Australia. That is all this fleet is really going to do anyways as it lacks the firepower to take a Russian city.

edit: And based on your milpower numbers earlier I would guess he has 20ish privateers = 1k milpower spread across the map. We definitely are missing visibility on a ton of his milpower since we are about even in visible ground troops, about even in your northern fleets, but we have a whole fleet in Australia that he has no answer for. So probably a total number of privateers about equal in MP to that fleet. Some are spread around the world doing various pillagey things but I bet most are waiting in the fog. And his milpower stagnation and slight drop over the last few turns is consistent with a mass privateer merge into corps, which is what you'd do in advance of sub upgrades followed by a fight.

edit2: I do kind of think they are mostly privateers and not more powerful ships, as those are his most cost-efficient builds and we can be pretty sure he is still in Letters of Marque if he has not re-added Oligarchic Legacy. No point in doing that unless you are spamming pirates in most cities, really. Frigates are also unwieldy to use without caravels (and probably not more efficient hammer-for-hammer than LoM-boosted privateers) and he has not been able to build caravels for ages, so not sure what else his hidden navy could really be comprised of.

edit3: Maybe more worrying is what happens if he upgrades 12 sub fleets and sends them to fight your fleet in the north. That would turn that fight from "dicey" to "unwinnable" most likely and would be worse for us than even destroyer upgrades. Another reason why waiting for Fascism seems kind of like a loss even if he gets Fission next... I just hope the privateers are not at Mitla already waiting to upgrade or things are going to get real bad real soon up there.

edit4: It may be too late for this but I might suggest adding a few privateer builds of your own in Japan/England so we can at least see his pillaging privateers from 2 tiles away without getting ZoC-blocked by them...

[ljubljana]

If we decide to move into their range next turn, here is a diagram of what I am thinking could work:



With the ZoC from the marked scout IC and destroyer positions, the furthest he can scout without killing what should appear to be bait ships are the tiles marked with a yellow X. The yellow line is his sight range if he puts ICs on those tiles. So we have an area where we can put our ships and not be scouted, assuming he does not kill your "bait" ships for fear of a first strike. As long as you are not 3 tiles away from anywhere he can place an IC, I think we should be free from scouting unless he decides to attack into the dark, and can then maybe get a first strike on the following turn. (I avoided the yellow C tile too as he could see it with a Cossack placed next to Buyniy where the line infantry is now.)

The big flaw is that he can slip a privateer past you and scout that way. But maybe they are on pillaging duty and he won't think to do that. If he doesn't do it this turn that will give us some kind of signal...

Thoughts? We will need to be extremely careful about positioning as if even one of your ships is in scout range of a Russian IC, he will see support bonuses and know where you are and then it's all over. But I can't think of anything else that might work.

edit: I will say that I do think any plan that involves moving into their range has at least a 70% chance of turning into a second Battle of (W)odin and losing us the game right there, with most of the other 30% being if we can manage to not get scouted. But do we have another choice if they are about to get 12 destroyers and become impossible to dislodge? I am not sure, if they just sail around your coast and burn one city every 2t and we never engage them that is GG as well.

[Woden]

If we decide to move into their range next turn, here is a diagram of what I am thinking could work:



With the ZoC from the marked scout IC and destroyer positions, the furthest he can scout without killing what should appear to be bait ships are the tiles marked with a yellow X. The yellow line is his sight range if he puts ICs on those tiles. So we have an area where we can put our ships and not be scouted, assuming he does not kill your "bait" ships for fear of a first strike. As long as you are not 3 tiles away from anywhere he can place an IC, I think we should be free from scouting unless he decides to attack into the dark, and can then maybe get a first strike on the following turn. (I avoided the yellow C tile too as he could see it with a Cossack placed next to Buyniy where the line infantry is now.)

The big flaw is that he can slip a privateer past you and scout that way. But maybe they are on pillaging duty and he won't think to do that. If he doesn't do it this turn that will give us some kind of signal...

Thoughts? We will need to be extremely careful about positioning as if even one of your ships is in scout range of a Russian IC, he will see support bonuses and know where you are and then it's all over. But I can't think of anything else that might work.

edit: I will say that I do think any plan that involves moving into their range has at least a 70% chance of turning into a second Battle of (W)odin and losing us the game right there, with most of the other 30% being if we can manage to not get scouted. But do we have another choice if they are about to get 12 destroyers and become impossible to dislodge? I am not sure, if they just sail around your coast and burn one city every 2t and we never engage them that is GG as well.

I wonder if a battleship fleet and a destroyer is enough to take Buyniy? Could we set up a line on the yellow, stash most of the fleet by Joe Aribo. Retake Buyniy, which would give us some vision on the opening between land masses. If I liberate the city back to you, the destroyer would end up on the harbor, right in line of the scouting ships. He might think our fleet is NW of Buyniy and set up closer on the far side of the island, ready to flank us if we push the gap but also be in range of our ships the following turn. Then we can swing around the island, take out whatever we can. We can create a solid line of ships on the yellow between Buyniy and Joe Aribo using both our scouting ships and the main fleet 2 tiles back, nearer Joe Aribo. 

If he attacks anything, it will probably be the western side, since that would look like where our fleet was located and he wouldn't have the movement to hit the east side and go around. 

Thoughts?

Edit: actually, I don't know how much damage a single battleship shooting at 75 would against a 72DS city, even a fleet at 85 might not be able to take out the walls. Would we risk 2 or 3 battleships here? Might be worth selling the distraction.

[Woden]

What about something like this...
   

Red is my ships, blue is your ships. Not 100% on the destroyer positions as the idea would be to be ready to push east of the island while  blocking his ships between the landmass with the ships by Buyniy. We attack Buyniy with the 2 battleships and destroyer, not sure if it is enough to take the city but we have the GA in range so it looks like our main fleet is there. If he decides to attack, he would want to do as much damage as possible, so would go where he thinks the main fleet would be located, i.e. near Buyniy. But our main fleet would be NE and we then would smash into his ships with everything the following turn. If he plays it defensively, we block his ships in the gap with the 2 ironclad fleets and destroyer with maybe a second line of your ironclads and hit any ships he has on the east side of the island. 

My best guess here is that Russia has the gap full of ships and is expecting us to hit him there and then has ships of the east side of the island ready to hit the backside or eastside of our attacking force. Best guess on composition of forces would be 2 lines of ICFs in the gap, battleships and a few IFCs on the east side. There probably is a few battleships south of the gap, ready to hit a city if we done push on him and provide ranged support to the IFCs in the gap. 

If he finishes Combined Arms this turn, he still has to wait to upgrade until next turn and won't push an attack if he thinks he can get destroyers into play. Probably hold back and upgrade (who wants to upgrade in the middle of a battle). If we think he will push an attack, I think this will also minimize loses, as we are directing him to minimal ships.

[ljubljana]

I am super sleepy rn (just starting work now, haven't had my coffee) but a few brief thoughts:

For this position to work, the IC line would need to be 1 tile closer to him than it is in the diagram. As it is now, he can sail an IC onto the musician tile or up against my caravels in the east and catch a glimpse of your fleet, which is enough as he will then see the support bonuses and basically know where we are.

I am afraid of leaving your GA out in the open like that...it will be easy for him to kill 1 IC, then sneak a privateer in and kill him to give you -5 strength on your battleships and IC. I would probably keep the GA with the main group of battleships so it can stick around for the whole fight, or at least guard it with destroyers.

A solid line at the front vs just scouting ships is an interesting tradeoff. With a solid line, no privateers can get through, but it's less likely that he will see the ships as bait and not attack them which would be the dream outcome. But I think if he sees a solid line on his turn, he is probably going to attack since he can claim a whole 6 IC kills + 1 destroyer + whatever battleships he gets at Buyniy for free. That is a great first strike for him and no reason not to take it, as opposed to if we just show him 3 scouting ships and he has to decide whether that's worth it or walking into a trap.

Sadly, my caravels don't have enough movement to reach those positions in the east (they have just 7 moves)

Retaking Buyniy seems like a question of whether we think we are more likely to get a first strike if we trick him into thinking our fleet is on the east instead of the west or if we trick him into thinking it is further back than it is. Taking Buyniy does reveal that a lot of our ships are right behind what is visible to him and tells him how far he needs to pull back if he wants to spend the turn upgrading destroyers safely. Plus I would guess it will take 2-3 battleships to zero our the health (as you said) which will be easy kills for williams on his turn.

When do you think you will play the turn? Asking because I am not sure how much commentary I can provide during the workday but this is probably the most important turn of the game. Might be worth taking it slow on this one.

[Woden]

Turn 195-Vikings
Early turn today! No advancement from Russia. In the north...
   

or by Australia...
   

But, as we anticipated...
   

He finished Combined Arms with a complete pillage of the Campus at Frigg (only took 3 pillages to complete the tech). He also hooked up 2 oil sources this turn and he chose to hook up the southern most source at his new city (pretty smart as it is unreachable by sea).

Edit: No plan on playing this turn anytime soon. It will have to wait until after the end of my work day.

[ljubljana]

Izumrud was ready to flip this turn, and it looks like its wall health is down compared to your last turn. Looks like it flipped and was recaptured so that confirms where the bulk of his fleet is, most likely.

He is still not making more ships for some reason? I don't get it. He isn't really running campus projects everywhere, right?

Why would you want to mod it out? It's simplistic but workable and doesn't ruin your game in ways that are hard to anticipate or mitigate like the WC, emergencies, and natural disasters can.

It has also worked mostly in your favour this game

Yeah, agreed. There is a lot of hate for it out there as it turns conquest into a maddening affair if you are not fast enough/don't pick a sound enough attack plan to mitigate its effects. Especially on land maps where advances are congested and awful due to the low speeds and movement rules. But I am not sure that is really a worse state of affairs than an early rush meta like we had in pre-GS.

I posted some thoughts on this in the lurker thread but it's a pity we have to wait until the end and can't discuss the key moments while the details are fresh in our heads. I think it would have been good learning, like studying chess positions.

Don't worry, I don't think this game is going to stop being fresh in my mind for a long time after it concludes...

[ljubljana]

If he didn't take the bait ships or approach them with privateers, that reinforces the notion that he would not attack them if we used them to block his scouting our forward line next turn IMO. Look at his poor musician just sitting there. I would also guess that with the recapture of Izumrud he is planning on upgrading in the gap, which makes sense as it is very strong defensively.

[Woden]

Buyniy has a harbor that can be pillaged. Do that plus either the harbor at Vladimir Monomakh or the trader down by The College Dropout and that is another Destroyer fleet or upgrading both my single ironclads. If I go the singles, I can use the one by HOD to scout his back lines and the one by Japan/England for privateer duty.

I am thinking we need to be bold here. If he wants to upgrade next turn, he won't bring the full force of his navy and without all his ironclads, will he attack with his battleships? What being bold entails, IDK yet!

[ljubljana]

Do you have a unit in range of TCD trader? Looks like your closest IC is 6t away which I thought was not enough, but I forget how much movement plundering a TR requires. VM harbor seems doable but you will take a lot of damage from 2 battleship fleet-strength city strikes, and it means no scouting the SW with your IC fleet so we may want to keep the frigates back another turn if we go for that. As for Buyniy, if we pillage that harbor, your ship that does it will be in scouting range and we should probably try to keep it to 0 support bonuses, so that if he scouts he won't think it's part of a larger fleet.

If we are going to upgrade, I would think it should be a ship that is close enough fight next turn. But that's actually awkward as one IC will be getting the harbor pillage and the other two are needed in our line... That is, unless we just pillage TR + harbor in Australia and upgrade the most northerly IC fleet in Phoenicia? I don't know if that would be enough gold though and it probably means delaying the TCD advance by a turn for lack of scouting.

Agree about being bold. Also agree about not knowing what that means yet