[SPOILERS] Woden and ljubljana like boats

[Woden]

Sorry, battleships south of Asahi, by (W)Odin.

By the way, 4 battleships did 36 damage to (W)Odin's walls and 5 damage to the city health.

Yes, fill in where you see fit.

[ljubljana]

I guess we overestimated their BS numbers. Looks like only these 4 plus a fifth they will upgrade next turn. That's some very good news, we should be able to get to Fascism before or shortly after they are able to take the city. That really gives us a lot of extra freedom to plan on the strategic level.

Also by the time they can take your capital I think all the other cities will have flipped back...

[Woden]

I posted most screenshots worth showing already. The ironclad near Hod is sailing east to join in on the fight but I might send him north a little and pillage the cocoa plantation at one of those island cities. I did switch to Totalitarianism and if I focus on cultural pillages, I might be able to finish it in 5-ish turn, depending on the naval battle there.

Other than that, I wasn't able to kill any Cossacks but did redline a few more. We need to flip these cities soon so he can't keep landing more Cossacks.

Down south, I have my IFC ready to pillage the coastal oil whenever he hooks it up. Hopefully he doesn't have a guard on the builder and I can snag him too. Started working on Kaiser's last city. It will be a few turns to take out the walls but he doesn't have long for this game. With the Australian cities, I am not sure if I will lose any war wariness but who knows. I did kill the privateer along the Japanese coast and have my destroyer watching the outlet of the southern sea. Hopefully we can stop any privateers from coming out of there.

[ljubljana]

OMG look:



Last turn I begged Bruindane for one coal in exchange for one diplo favor (so, in exchange for "I will love you forever") and it looks like they accepted! Be still, my beating heart <3333

They asked for a renewal of our research alliance which I definitely want to accept as repayment, unless you have objections?

[Woden]

Yes, renew alliance. Part of me is thinking we could just go for everybody's capital and win this game but we still would have to deal with the Russian navy. I do think we shouldn't renew anymore after this one just in case the game drags on. It should end right around the time nukes come online and we maybe able to nuke all the capitals we don't currently have and capture them all in 1 turn. I will have to see how far Balder is from suboptimal's capital. We may need to found a city closer.

Allen McGregor is just in range of dropping on right next to the city.

Edit: I would have to settle the island east of Balder to reach suboptimal's capital. Might want to think about buying a settler for 1,085 in 15 turns out of Balder.

[ljubljana]

Yeah, it looks like exactly ONE tile in your empire is in range of China's capital, the cow 1E of your capital. Luckily, it is a flatground tile, which I think is required to place a silo. For suboptimal's we are not too close, the grass at Balder is 18 away from their capital's first ring, but both of the unclaimed islands near there look close enough. Good thing we made so much progress against Australia or we could not even dare to contemplate this.

Definitely agree on not renewing after this. If you can get 3 nukes in 30 turns, we might be able to sneak our a domination win even if we're losing vs Russia at that point. I think that should probably be our explicit plan for the first 3 nukes unless something major changes in the meantime.

With the fall of Adios Hermanos, Russia has dropped to a tie for third in the Domination victory with only 1 capital in their possession. The in-game Domination Victory screen does not reflect this but it is true

[ljubljana]

On reflection, we may have missed an opportunity with Russia's oil...



They are going to cover it next turn with that warrior on the campus, and then we will never be able to dislodge it. Unless...unless I snipe the warrior NOW with the Dreadnought or another frigate. That would mean an EXTREMELY forward deploy though, in full view of Russia and with multiple frigates in range of sniping. Not sure that's worth it...

edit: I guess we could get it with the Dreanought at TCD in a couple turns. Either way, you should pick up quite a few campus/mine pillages over the next few turns. I might even think about starting the Military Engineer soon to make sure it can get to Russia on time, we might be in position to up the nuke timetable by a little bit!

edit2: WAIT I am WRONG. Look at the tile 1 SE of Borodino. That is an INDUSTRIAL road. They are going to be 0.25 MP short of blocking the oil!!

[ljubljana]

Turn 196 - Phoenicia

Stayed up too late on the turn again. Got too sleepy. Can't shake the feeling I made tons of stupid dumb-o mistakes. Big sad if so.

Anyways, first thing was I got annoyed by this:



Russia sneaking in more science pillages (and pillages generally) at Adios Hermanos. The city is worth more to them as a free city they can pillage than its actual production would have been, given how close we are to the end of the game. I vote for no CS or free city pillages, full stop, in the next game



Do you think the game will go 24 more turns? If so, we may want to consider keeping Kaiser around in OCC mode...if we kill him, I believe the era will roll in 24 turns (since you, China, and Russia are in the Modern Era), but if he is still alive then a majority of civs will be stuck in the Industrial Era and we'll get to keep our bonus movement and loyalty buff for probably 20 turns longer. Not sure we'll still be in a position for that to matter when the time comes, but worth thinking about. 20 more turns on our Golden Age is almost certainly worth more to us than one more city.

Also not 100% sure whether 3/6 civs being Modern is enough to make the era roll or if a strict majority is needed. Let me know if you have more insight into this mechanic than me.



Anyways, I freaked out about the AH pillages and just dove for the campus at Frigg. This P/S corps can probably be killed but it will take most of his turn to do it and I have two more right behind it. I even started vacating the campuses up north in case we need even more units down here. Those units are headed down by sea this time so that Russia's borders at captured Abugida do not spot them and lead williams to realize that the campuses are empty. I want to waste as much of his time fighting me as I can so he does not shave any more time off Fission than he is already going to...



Minesweeper reveals the scale of the threat we are dealing with here - 21 visible ships, plus up to 4 more around Abugida that I didn't catch a glimpse of. So numbers are pretty similar, with him probably slightly ahead in terms of real ships but us in terms of total ships. That won't be true once he trashes my bait ships (the ICs should barely dodge the one-shot from the destroyers but only just), but if he does that you should be in position for some kind of first strike. Whether we take it may be an open question though as waiting for Fascism is a solid option as well, especially now that things are looking up in Russia's core. We could also just wait to attack until the disconnected oil takes effect, which should be worth a nice penalty as well, maybe as much as -10! I definitely think we should hit non-destroyer ships as much as we can if we do attack, since the destroyers might have their CS fall off a cliff in 2 turns.

At any rate, this turn will be the real test of how much we can bully them with just a couple scout ships. They still do not know just how large your fleet is, I think, so for all they know we could have 1.5 times their numbers here. Especially since they have not seen too much else from you in terms of troops, they might assume almost all of your 2800 milpower is right here with its guns trained on them if they kill my ships. They are going to want to be reeeeeally sure that's not the case before they launch such an attack, and they don't have enough info to actually be that sure. As nervous as I am about our odds in a heads-up battle, I do not envy the choice they will have to make on this upcoming turn...



This is the one that really made me feel like a huge idiot tonight. I spent SO LONG trying to find a way to do this without getting scouted, but there just isn't one thanks to the GE on the cow by VM that will embark and reveal the whole position. So he will probably kill 2 of our ships, I would guess - your IC and one of my caravels. Don't think he can get a frigate as he does not quite have the range.

I didn't think they would stay and fight, but halfway through I realized that dropping LoM means his privateers have only 6 movement. So no escape for them after all. I guess we pulled off a coup here and are about to trade 2-3 of our ships for 11 of theirs. The fun thing is, their fleet looks much smaller than we expected but actually our estimate of 15 ships was on the low end. You killed 4 single ships and there are 6 fleets + 3 singles remaining = actually 19 ships here before we showed up (!). We just got a first strike by having more movement, and they also merged a bunch of fleets when they probably shouldn't have, to ultimately end up likely to win in a rout. That's pretty crazy given how worried I was about this fleet...2 missing movement from LoM really made all the difference here, I'd guess.

If he does run, I am barely still in range of TCD, so you can chase him down while I start working on that. And as for roland's fleet caravel there, I didn't see it this turn either. Could be hidden under the field cannon + trader, I've seen UI glitches like that before. But there is another possibility...he doesn't really have too many harbors left with all those inland cities, or many TRs...and he is at 0 gold...

And yeah, that promoted caravel fleet I moved forward is a desperate attempt to save the half-health single frigate that I accidentally moved into a snipeable position because it's 3 AM and I'm barely lucid. Dumb. So by spending hours microanalyzing this, I ended up with a half-assed deploy worse than any of the options I considered because it got too late for me to function. I'd better learn that lesson fast, while it still matters...

[Woden]

He won't get a oil shortage penalty. He will most likely hook up oil at the tundra city next turn and it will only replace the oil I pillage. If he is smart, he would have bought protector units for the coastal and I won't be able to pillage them until I can get a ranged ship down there (battleship fleet out of Thor in 2 turns). All we are doing by pillaging his oil will be to delay when he can upgrade more units, which is a good thing since we will be killing most of the privateers he could upgrade to subs and we have a few turns before more destroyers at Asahi.

Kaiser dies! The era will end in 24 turns regardless if he lives or dies. There will be 4 players beyond the Industrial Era soon anyways. Bruidane civic research is matching mine and even better right now. He will most likely have a modern civic soon, if he doesn't already. You can research Modern Era techs and Russia and me are already in the Atomic Era.

[ljubljana]

re: oil shortage, good point, you are correct. There is no way williams sent out such a valuable settler unescorted in the first place.

Wait, who is the fourth player beyond Industrial? I am quite far away on my current research path of Rifling - Ballistics - Radio - Refining, ~30 turns from finishing Radio, and am even further from Suffrage. That is unless you think I should be doing Electricity - Steel next instead? That would get me Steel in ~30 turns instead of battleships in ~50 turns, but I'm not too sure what the point is since he will have nukes by then and likely focusing on your cities. But I am fine either way on research, let me know what you think is best.

But yeah, I only count 3 civs in the Modern Era currently, you, China, and Russia. Indonesia, Japan, Australia are all way too far behind to catch up in the next 24 turns. So I think it's down to me, and if I deliberately don't complete a Modern Era tech anytime soon, we may be able to prolong the Industrial Era for some time... Not sure if it's the best move, but I do think it is a legitimate option that we are in a position to execute if we wanted to.

At least, if I'm understanding the mechanic correctly? Pretty sure my era has not changed yet at least, as the narrator still talks about "the steady hum of machinery, the acrid smell of smoke, vision clouded by ash and soot" every time I load up the save. I thought the era change countdown started as soon as a majority of civs finished a tech/civic in the next era, but I could be wrong about that.

edit: I guess I had better check suboptimal's research progress first before I say things like that. They shouldn't be close to the Modern Era but I guess if they don't go for Industrialization maybe they could get there on Bruindane's coattails. Not sure why they would do that though.