[SPOILERS] Chevalier Mal Fet and Marcopolothefraud lead a Soviet Down Under

[williams482]

Turn 196:

Scorched Earth completes:



After Izumrud blasts away an embarked city state unit to clear the way for our spotters, here is the visible situation in the Panthalassic:



I failed to anticipate the possibility that Ljubljana would be able to provide relevant reinforcements. That's a notable error on my part right there, especially since I was generally aware of the existence of both ironclad fleets and I think the single ironclad as well. These are not especially strong units, with the ironclads suffering -5 strength due to lack of resources (same as my ships, oddly, despite me showing +12, -16 at the empire level. My coal plant definitely isn't generating power, so what is this about?) and lacking the benefits of admiral support or promotions. I can beat the stuffing out of them, but the counter to that is that they almost certainly can't hurt me very much trying to attack into a confined space.

My instinct is, yet again, that these ships are bait. And my incentives here are to delay if I can because I want to upgrade. Further, nothing here is both close and fast enough to properly encircle my forces next turn, nor is there any credible threat sneaking up behind me to do the same.

Because of the speed of the Norwegian ships and the precise geography of the area, the tile 2E of Asahi can only be attacked by three melee ships. A healthy Embolon/Reinforced Hull destroyer fleet on that tile could tank the two hits from the visible Norwegian destroyers, taking 23 to deal 40 and 25 to deal 47, then that lightly injured Norwegian Ironclad could tack on another 18 (and take 50). If Woden has any battleships in the area they could also pitch in, but he'd need three fleet shots to finish it off. ZoC from that destroyer can shelter my ranged ships from melee counterattacks, and ensure that any ranged strikes which can reach place the enemy ranged ships in dangerous positions. That makes using this turn for upgrades viable, so that's what I'm going to do.

So, policy swaps. Force Modernization for Drill Manuals is obvious, it's the reason I'm making a policy swap at all. Both Oligarchic Legacy and Wars of Religion absolutely must stay in for combat benefits. Is there anything available for econ or diplo cards that would beat what I have in there right now? I guess one could make an argument for Liberalism (+1 happy to all cities with 2+ districts) over Natural Philosophy, but I'm not finding that convincing right now so I'll keep the science card in. Here we are:



As Thrawn said, I am left with no option to buy an additional swap with gold this turn. I most certainly can upgrade my six healthiest, best-promoted ironclads to destroyers at 330g a pop. With offensive fleet action ruled out for this turn I decide four of my battleships can have a bit of fun blasting away at (W)Odin:



36 off the defenses isn't much, but it is a start, and if I am not pressured further we will eventually break through. Final deployment is as so:



Also of note here, the cossack situation. Woden did manage to kill one of them, and now has a general in the area. It's hard to calculate the odds of killing that pike with two attacks without knowing it's current hit points (looks to be around 65-70), but three will definitely do it and we have enough for that in the area. Our first attacker delivers 37, taking 23, a lucky roll (I expected 31 and 29). My second cossack cleans up, taking 29 damage, and has movement left to pillage and depart from Woden's Grand Master's Chapel, which he does. Two lightly damaged cossack corps tag team and destroy the Punic Pike and Shot on Frigg's campus (revealing a Punic pike and shot corp three tiles west of that campus). Our remaining units shoot through the gap, blow up whatever else they can reach, and here we are:



It's about 30 turns behind schedule, but the cossack pillaging invasion of Norway is finally on. Obviously those two oil wells are extremely high priority targets, although wrecking campuses and industrial zones is not far behind. To press the advantage further I pray up fresh cossacks in Abugida and Asahi. Abugida will flip next turn, hopefully nothing weird happens to the unit inside.

I also send a couple privateers sneaking west from Svalbard, hoping to tack on some extra damage while the cossacks and my fleet are drawing most of the attention. 

In the Pacific, Woden proposes an equal and opposite scenario in my core:



Those ironclads are no easy target, and the destroyer is basically invulnerable. All I can do is sit back and hope the Raiders do something silly, like moving their frigates up somewhere I can kill them. I also realize this turn that I have erred by failing to move my handful of ground units to pillage-blocking positions, and this is further exacerbated by the AI road network being trash. Looky here:



I'm not sure how, exactly, given that roads within your territory are supposed to auto-upgrade once you have the ability to build better roads, but that iron tile 1SE of Borodino is an industrial road. The most valuable tile of all here is clearly that oil, which I am protecting with a probably suicidal privateer so that Woden cannot kill that unit and coastal raid the tile unless he has a ranged ship somewhere unexpected. The warrior on Borodino's campus was in Borodino at the start of the turn, I foolishly moved him without considering the vulnerability of this oil. In order to protect that oil next turn I need to move him back to Borodino this turn, while if my roads were actually upgraded the warrior coming up from the southeast would be ready and able to take that spot next turn instead. So, I fully expect Woden to pillage that library and campus next turn, which I would be able to (temporarily) prevent if I had decent roads, or had been smarter and anticipated this situation. Oh well.

Ljubljana found and attacked my privateer by Fort Miln last turn:



Couldn't kill it, but it will die on another attack and cannot shoot back for enough damage to save itself. Running away also seems unlikely to be successful, that caravel is faster than me and there are probably other units in the general area which would be able to help in sweeping for this unit. Instead, I think the proper choice is between pillaging the lighthouse or the niter mine here. The Niter mine could be a short term inconvenience as Woden seems to be building frigates for upgrade, but the builder we spotted in the area is likely able to fix the damage soon (both tiles we pillaged a few turns ago are back in action). Pillaging the lighthouse, meanwhile, will net us 15 extra faith (not really relevant) and break something that requires scarcer resources to fix. I'm going to go with that.

My alliance level with Kaiser has increased, leading me to actually look at that part of the map for the first time in a bit. Apparently he's lost another city, and has just one left:



That's unfortunate, I think, as the Raiders will likely get a war weariness reduction once he's dead. How much of one I'm not sure, but certainly they'll have a lot of grievances which will immediately vanish.

We pillage what we can from the traitors at Adios Hermanos:



And that's all for this turn.

[roland of gilead]

Situation up north



China wants Adios back fast we may need to watch out for them.




Low end gone next turn


Aggressive in south west


I buy renaissance walls in dropout

[williams482]

I probably was too conservative with the privateers, but what else was there to do? Those things are hilariously outclassed against ironclads, even when merged into fleets. I knew I was making the situation down here worse by swapping out the privateer card for the benefit of our Diomede fleet, I just have to hope the damage the Raiders can do here is limited relative to what I can do to them up north.

Failure to spend these ships aggressively is probably going to be high on my list of regrets at the end of this game.

The Punic ships by Asahi are clearly still bait, but bait I think I can clean out while maintaining a relatively strong defensive position. We'll be on the offensive there.

I was not expecting Woden's city strike plus the pike and shot corp to be able to kill a healthy single cossack, but there you go. Judging by the damage they didn't exactly have the toughest time of it either. The plan is to run away into that donut hole in Norwegian territory, and hope to be able to swarm and kill the pikes if they pursue.

[williams482]

Turn 197:

Abugida has flipped, as expected, teleporting my freshly purchased cossack to an inconvenient spot 1NW of the city center. As revealed previously, Ljubljana has moved up their batch of cannon fodder:



My coal ships are running a -7 penalty for lack of resources. I'm at +6, -10. What the fuck.

On the topic of resource shortages, guess who didn't do what he said he was going to do in his turn report last turn? This guyyyyy...



I did not move the warrior from Borodino's campus to the oil last turn. That plus the stupid road bullshit means that Woden WILL pillage that oil well next turn, there is no way I can kill that ironclad in one turn. I can hook up a second source at Gromiky next turn, but not this one, so I'll suffer a turn of -3 strength to my oil units on top of whatever horrific penalty the game will see fit to apply to my coal units. No bones about it, failing to get that warrior into position was stupid and I may pay heavily for it.

Anyway.

The Raiders are awfully insistent on getting those Phoenician ships killed, aren't they? Presumably the bulk of Woden's fleet is lurking less than a turn's movement behind, waiting to pounce on the ships that kill them. I suppose it's possible this could be some kind of deke designed to keep me cowering in Abugida Bay and, uhh, blasting down Woden's capital? Not likely.

So how do I beat the trap I know is set here? I see a few ways:

1) Take the bait. Kill these units as efficiently and inexpensively as possible, leaning on my ranged units that don't take damage and cleaning up with caravels and injured ironclads to limit the reduction to my counterattack capabilities. With that task accomplished, set a firm defensive line in the channel between Joe Aribo and Asahi, not unlike the one the Raiders set last turn, and dare Woden to attack me into a narrow space. Downsides include: Woden presumably has open borders with China and can use their territory while I can't (although I should probably try to arrange some sort of trade, I doubt common ground will be easy to find), Woden may already be set up in that space, I can't tell because these ships ZoC block my spotters, and Woden might just win that confrontation anyway. Slightly lesser ships but more of them and the first strike is no safe bet for me.

2) Kill these units at range while keeping a defensive posture. Three destroyers can effectively wall off Ljubljana from crossing between Asahi and Connor Goldson, and I can blast away at their two ironclad fleets with battleships from safe positions behind. That's a wager on the Norwegian fleet being far enough back that they couldn't reach my destroyer screen, because if they could then that would be a great opportunity to attack my ships from multiple tiles with no support bonuses.

3) Be pathetically passive. Set a defensive picket even further back, between Diomede and Asahi, and just keep chipping away at (W)Odin, or recapturing Abugida. That puts pressure on the Raiders to actually bring their full fleet against me, but it also gives them a good tactical situation in which to do so. It also makes it extremely likely that my whole fleet will be trapped in this relatively narrow space where maneuvering will be difficult. I find this one an especially poor choice.

When in doubt, attack.

We're going with option 1.

So, how do we break down this Punic squadron without moving our destroyers or causing any significant damage to our melee ships?

After running the numbers on a few scenarios, I conclude there is no way to get this done without involving the ironclads, who are already injured and cannot heal. Well, sucks to be you guys, you're going in anyway. One avenue to improving those melee attacks is to take out the caravel on the far eastern end of the formation with a privateer and a caravel of my own, a +4 combat strength swing in flanking/support bonuses. Inching that privateer forward reveals this:



Well, that's not exactly what we want either. I'm definitely going to have to spend at least one battleship shot on this guy, so I move up my furthest back and shoot for 27, a near-minimum roll. Our three promotion frigate moves in and shoots for 29, slightly better than expected, and we finish the last 29 with a caravel who takes 20 in return, moving up another caravel for flanking (ZoC from moving adjacent goes away when the relevant enemy unit is killed). The privateer shoots it's original target for 46, and the aforementioned caravel finishes the job, taking 11 and revealing something far more sinister:



That guy has friends, of course. This forces a change of plans for defensive alignments, but doesn't force a change of approach: I can still line up well enough east to west on the row one north of my caravel and privateer, holding a high value patch of sea with four destroyers. That even allows me to expend one of them finishing off that caravel fleet in back, if I am so inclined. I absolutely do not have the firepower to do much damage to those ships with Ljubljana's suicide squad in the way, so the objective is still to dismantle those chumps as efficiently as possible and prepare for the Norwegian onslaught.

My second battleship steams up to take a 67% shot at killing the other single caravel and lands it, further weakening the Punic formation. Now the easternmost ironclad fleet is flanked by two injured ironclads of our own, who deal a neutral 45 and a very unlucky 44, taking 23 and 18. Our second and final frigate dishes out the final 11. Two battleships shoot the promoted ironclad, hoping for a low-probability two hit kill; when that doesn't happen a lightly damaged caravel cleans up. Our last battleship shot takes 42 off the last ironclad fleet, I surround the unit with Russian vessels and one of our single promotion ironclads finishes the job, scoring a promotion in the process. I move up a destroyer to wipe out the last Phoenician unit, and reveal the full force (more or less) of the Norwegian fleet:



Seemingly every tile between those ships and land is occupied by a Norwegian vessel. I set up in a defensive line as planned:



Zero regrets about my decision to attack this turn, nor the choice to sit back and draw them in last turn. Had I held back now any defensive screen I set up would have been punctured and my fleet destroyed, here we're set for a slugfest on even ground where I've got slightly better frontline ships and (I believe) superior ranged support. Alternately, attempting to engage last turn would have left me fighting on a far longer front, where Woden's volume of top-line vessels would have been overwhelming. I am not optimistic about my chances of pulling off a victory here, but outside of actually being granted an unobstructed first strike on Woden's best ships (something my opponents clearly took pains to avoid, as they should) this is the best setup I could hope for in which to take this fight.

Now for the cossacks. The two recent purchases (one with a free promotion, one without) merge in Abugida Bay. The argument for making a corps here is that this unit probably will have to tank some hits to survive at all and it will be operating in a combined space. I'm not sure if this is a good idea, but I'm doing it. I pray up yet another cossack in Asahi, partially because I'll need the unit in Raiderland, and partially because I need the unit there now to slow down the flip. Even with a cossack in there it's showing as 6 turns away, not good.

As for the cossacks with hooves on the ground, there's some inconvenient anti-cavalry units up here in the north, but not a lot down south. You know, where the oil is. Yee haw:



On top of the listed pillages, the cossack 2NW of Freya took out a trade route for 717g. Holy cow.

Woden is down to 23 oil, a net loss of 2 since last turn. Blowing up these two wells will cost him either 6 or 8 per turn, depending on what policies he's running, nothing that will hurt him for a few more turns but possibly relevant if the battle in the north drags out into a slog (which I expect it will: I have no intention of accelerating the loss of my ships by attacking into a loaded formation unless I think I can break it open). Woden has a builder in Thor, but he'll have to chase off my cossacks to use it and that will take time.

Speaking of builders, I buy one in Borodino. If that oil is getting pillaged, it won't stay that way. I also upgrade three warriors into Line Infantry for 325g and 10 niter each, boosting Replaceable Parts and giving me a few units that can take a few hits while blocking off pillageable tiles. Two privateers and my city strike do something resembling real damage to that three-promotion ironclad:



Now, what to do with the privateers who I failed to spend more fruitfully? Invisible or not, if Woden continues to press here he is highly likely to find them, so I believe the smart play is to lash out. And what should I lash out at? A little probing reveals the Phoenician fleet:



Oh for +2 movement on these guys. I'd swap to it now for 645g if it would do any good, but the extra speed wouldn't apply until next turn. Chevalier's defiant challenge to the Indonesian Jongs nearly 100 turns ago rings a bit hollow now as our flimsy wooden ships (inferior combatants even to the Jongs of yesteryear) are walled off from that strait by the steel hulls of Norwegian vessels which could blast them to smithereens with barely a scratch in return.

I should have killed those frigates when I could. Keeping a few frigate fleets alive to hide in cities and shoot out is worth something in a battle of attrition and throwing all of them away probably wouldn't have been wisest, but the privateers would have been better spent there.

The only target here I could possibly kill that is also worth a damn to the Raiders is that injured single promotion Norwegian ironclad. It looks like it has roughly 55 HP. I would expect to do 12 with the frigate fleet, then 11, 11, and 12 with the three privateer fleets, and a probably fatal 9 with the single frigate. The two remaining single privateers could take some decidedly non-lethal potshots at a Phoenician frigate (roughly 50 damage total). That's not great, but what are my other options?

I could keep trying to run away. The end game of that approach would be to scatter Woden's ships and force them to continue to respect the possibility that I have something dangerous lurking invisibly just out of reach. Which I would, because this would also (if the ships survived) preserve the ability to turn some of these privateer fleets into submarines once I have more oil hooked up, and those are units that actually can pack a punch. Screw it. I'm going to double down and scatter:



Hey, I bet that's the ironclad we met outside Svetlana a couple turns ago. Apparently we did give him enough EXP to promote. Good times, good times.

I think this is a bad decision, but I don't have good options here and anything that confuses the Raiders and encourages them to move slowly in trying to bomb out my core is probably a good thing. That's my excuse, but I fully expect to be professing my own foolishness in next turn's report.

I offer Bruindane our three surplus luxuries for open borders:



This should tell us if they are in "fuck you for wrecking our shit" mode, or have settled into "lets make the best of a bad situation and take whatever we can." I consider not pillaging the campus at Adios Hermanos in a gesture of good faith, but there's no way for me to communicate that I'm doing that on purpose or even any guarantee that my action is noticed, so pillage away. The pike and shot are likely doomed, but the two knights will escape and could conceivably find a part in the Raider war if it drags on long enough.

The reason for Woden's increased success against the last of Kaiser's cities is made apparent to us:



That unit is lethal to Japanese cities, but on it's own little threat to us. In three turns we'll have three privateers and a frigate in this area, sufficient to either chase that off or kill it if it doesn't have friends.

Two privateers slip into waters where so many of their brethren were sunk before:



Hopefully this time, nobody is home.

[williams482]

The battle in the north needs a name. Good chance it decides the game, and it's definitely not Diomede II; too far north of the relevant island.

Battle of Asahi? Battle of the East China Sea? I dunno, not loving any of that. Open to suggestions.

[roland of gilead]

Battle of the Old Firm

[williams482]

Turn 198:

Replaceable Parts completes:



On to Chemistry, Plastics to follow.

I like both names suggested, but I'm going with Finnmark for that lovely double meaning. Whatever I'm going to call it, here's the situation:



Woden surprised me by opting not to engage, instead capturing Buyniy and Izumrud. First impression: I don't understand why he would do this. I've been handed a first strike chance against the real meat of the Norwegian navy and I'm taking it. The only question is which side of Asahi to attack.

Before I make that decision, some pillaging. Cossacks in southern Norway take out two oil wells, an entertainment complex, and a dye plantation. Woden has 21 oil stockpiled now, another net -2 last turn. That will be either -8 or -10 next turn, depending on what policies he is running. Unfortunately we won't be seeing penalties on his units in a relevant timeframe, especially if I can kill a few of them, but the longer things go the more the loss of these wells will hurt. My cossacks rear-guarding further to the north, both now redlined by pursuing Punic pikes, sprint west towards Loki (taking out a lumber mill in the process). I don't believe anything can reach them there on the Raiders' turn, and the plan for our next turn is to pillage that EC and possibly merge into a 58HP corp, or keep pillaging as two units if not pursued. My injured corps still get odds on Ljubljana's pike and shot units, so my hope in the next few turns is to draw those units down somewhere with relatively few city strikes in range, then jump them. Proper use of pillage and promotion healing will be essential to make that work.

We'll touch on the home front more later, but Woden surprisingly opted to sink a privateer instead of taking out my exposed oil well, so my destroyers are operating at full strength. That's a big deal. My coal units continue to work under an inexplicable -7 penalty, despite my 4 coal per turn deficit.

And another surprise: Bruindane accepted my offer! I'm going to follow that success by offering him a cool 1,000g for his 25 coal stockpile. We're about to hook up another oil source this turn and will have to swap off most ship production anyway, this seems a good time to give that a shot. I'm really sick of that damn -7 combat strength.

So, Finnmark. The space between Asahi and Izumrud seems like the natural place to hold the line with a minimal detachment while the bulk of my fleet attempts to wrap around to the north. The two promotion destroyer already in place can (barely) tank two destroyer strikes and two battleship strikes. Running the numbers for this situation makes Woden's decision to take these cities seem a little more sensible: He's running Our Finest Hour, a democracy-only policy that gives +5 combat strength in or adjacent to friendly territory. That's going to make any ships along this coastline tougher to dig out, but it won't help the vessels north of Asahi and those are the ones we're going to try to clean out.

How much damage can we actually do here? We're going to need to get lucky to create a real breakthrough, but we can kill most of this destroyer screen. First two battleships move up and blast the southeastern destroyer for 20 and 18. Our two farthest back of the front line destroyers move up, and one attacks for 39 taking 24. A frigate moves up and shoots for 17, and our privateer knocks off the final two points. One down:



I work out from here that two destroyers and a suicide caravel can take out the southernmost of the remaining trio, which leaves me one destroyer, two battleship shots, and whatever else I can scrape up to take out the spearpoint unit and allow a motley mix of caravels and battered ironclads to descend on Woden's destroyers. There's a caravel just far enough out that it can't hit any battleships, but it can hit the destroyer I want it to hit, and it can reach the tile I want it to attack from... but I move it there without properly thinking things over and realize that it can't do both:



Well, fuck. Already had combats play out, so I can't even consider a reload. I have no ranged strikes I haven't already spent here, so I've little choice but to send in the suicide caravel here and hope to get lucky. Battleship #1 shoots for 17 and suicide caravel goes in for 13, both exactly the expected result. Our destroyer charges in dealing only 40 (45 expected) and taking 23. Our battleship stands zero chance of finishing the job, so I send in a destroyer who takes 16 damage and earns a promotion, if it can survive to the next round. I still have a destroyer and a battleship shot left to spend here, but I can kill nothing more.

Having failed here, what more damage can I do around Asahi? I do have two destroyers, a battleship, and a frigate which could not reach any useful northern targets, plus the double-strike from the city, the unspent destroyer in the north (the battleship was foolishly moved preemptively to no benefit) and that motley gang of injured and obsolete melee attackers. Woden does get that +5 in and around his territory, but it is counteracted by Victor's +5 unit strength within Asahi's borders.

Asahi does have a ranged strength of 80, equal to a battleship fleet. Why my cities were stuck at 55 instead of 65 for so long remains a puzzle. The military alliance bonus is not showing on either side in the city ranged strike interface, which seems odd but is likely irrelevant as both of us will have that bonus for far longer than this battle and likely the game. For further weirdness, the cossack inside Asahi appears to be providing a flanking bonus on top of what a ship inside Asahi already gives. I shoot the destroyer on the oil 1W of Asahi with a frigate for 11, city strikes for 12 and 10, an ironclad out of the city for 15 (taking 50, ouch) and send in the destroyer, who had a 17% shot to complete the kill but manages to pull it off, taking 22 damage and earning a promotion:



That's a bad thing, it's now dangerously out of position. On the bright side, Ljubljana's more impotent attackers are occupying two sides and will not provide flanking bonuses, but I cannot give it as many support bonuses as I otherwise would have, and that can be significant. I take potshots with my last two battleships, scramble whatever melee vessels are left into defensive positions, and wait for the reprisal:



This is going to be a very bad turn. I sank three ships, but Woden has plenty more to play with, ranged and melee both. He'll be able to break down and tear into either half of my fleet here, and once he's done that the game is basically over as the other half won't be able to punish him, and even if they pull it off won't be strong enough to do anything against his cities, again. I failed to do enough damage this turn, and I'm almost certain that we're going to lose as a result.

The situation off the coast of Borodino:



Emboldened by the flight of my privateers Ljubljana has finally shown the full strength of his fleet. I highly doubt they can take anything off me any time soon, we demonstrated in opposite roles on the other side of the world that frigates are pretty damn fragile, and they can't do much of anything against 90+ strength cities with 400 wall HP. But they can more or less guarantee that any fleet I try to build anew here will be torn back apart piecemeal as they pull out of the docks. I take a few impotent potshots at various Norwegian ships I can reach, hook up Gromiky's second oil, and swap everything off of ships and on to campus projects.

Here's a belated shot of the cossacks in Norway:



This is shaping up to be a masterclass in how to win battles but lose wars, and yet I find myself at a loss for where I actually went wrong.

[roland of gilead]

I doubt you did much wrong. You have been fighting 1 against 2 and winning for a long time. That couldn't last forever.

[roland of gilead]

BTW woden landed a berserker on the former Indonesian island looking to pillage. I was able to buy valettta wals and almost kill it.

he may have to rethink there but a Cossack may be helpful.

[williams482]

Good initiative buying the walls to shoot back. Is there really anything left to pillage over there? The Raiders may not even know what the interior looks like.