[PB59 Amicalola] The Vespertine Hour(s)

[Amicalola]

Tactical nukes iirc, have a good chance of evading SDI tho!

That's true, for sure. The big issue is I had ICBM's available this turn but not tactical nukes in range. Probably will mostly build tact. nukes for that exact reason though, from now on, other than a small stockpile of ICBMs that can hit one key target as necessary.

[superdeath]

[Ginger()]

25xp isn’t enough for the 5 promos? But you could’ve just done Morale and still hit the city...
Congrats on grad school, what’s your thesis/project on?

[Hitru]

I love your empire! Who cares if pop is happy or not, both give the same amount of hammers when whipped

[Amicalola]

I love your empire! Who cares if pop is happy or not, both give the same amount of hammers when whipped

Thanks, I love it too! I've never really seen anything like it, at least on this scale. And to those wise words - we'll see that in action soon enough.  

25xp isn’t enough for the 5 promos? But you could’ve just done Morale and still hit the city...
Congrats on grad school, what’s your thesis/project on?

Bingo. I thought about promoting to Morale, but I decided it isn't worth wasting a future-Commando just to take the city 1 turn early. I think promoting morale would have just been sunk-cost fallacy. Time will tell if that was a mistake (mostly the worry is a whipped tank ruining something). 

Cheers! I'm doing a Masters of Teaching (secondary schools), so no thesis. Instead they give us a pretty normal amount of coursework (classes/essays/etc.) on pedagogy, but simultaneously throw us in the deep end with intensive placements at schools, starting nearly straight away. Which is kind of awesome, and also kind of terrifying. My first one is in only 2.5 weeks...

[Amicalola]

T248 Part One - Taking Our Continent! 
This one gets some detail.

Overall, it looks like Cairo followed the same strategy as last turn, using the infantry he had left, and could draft, to take out as many attackers as possible and recapture some cities. Fair enough. 


Reading the combat log has become a task in and of itself. This doesn't even include any of the other wars I have going on.

While we lose a lot more troops compared to if Cairo had just passively huddled, this leaves several key cities largely undefended. Most importantly, Konya and Edirne have virtually no garrison between them.



First, I take out the remaining territory in Naufragar's core. 


This went mostly according to plan, except for a bizarre string of combats during the Battle of Big Ben, where two tanks in a row lost 80% fights flawlessly. Maybe they were sympathisers of the rebellious sentiment back home.  

Next, we shell the living daylight out of the Ticlag (the only city Mackoti named, strangely), and take it alongside Kayseri. 


I made a mistake here, should have saved one bomber for Kayseri but I got excited. Might have saved that lost tank otherwise. This is also when I remember to mop up the stragglers, including getting that stupid non-Commando tank up to 26EXP by whacking some poor longbowman.

With a port established, we unleash the commandos. A landing in Izmir takes Istanbul and Konya, while another landing in Ticlag marches on Edirne. 



Before we finish off Cairo, I have a thought to check the power graph.


I'm pretty sure this drop is just the first turn of the war. Those nukes were pretty good!

And so, all that's left is to mop up the remaining few cities. Soon, Cairo is no more. 


The home continent is ours! This war was three turns total, which beats my DZ/SD record by a turn. Whew.

GG Cairo! It's crazy to think that 100 turns ago I was worried that you were going to be the one killing me. Did you consider attacking me instead of Nauf back then, or was I being paranoid about nothing?

[Krill]

Good god how much more destruction? Please post the F8 screen?

[Ginger()]

Congratulations, you've unlocked 30% more city micro!

Țiclag is a Romanian translation of a biblical Philistine city, I tried finding the equivalent name in English on google but failed after a few minutes. I guess it's some connection to David and Goliath? But we all know Mackoti is the latter.
Never enough Krill, Amica's dreams run red with rivers of blood and fallout, an outside context problem which all back-tech civs must fear   
Reading along has felt like watching one of those satires that stretches and stretches the joke like taffy, defying all expectations and slowly, surreally becoming an acceptable reality.

[Amicalola]

T248 Part Two - Other Exciting Things!
When we last saw the West Coast, our armies and navies had been completely routed. Miguelito pushes the advantage this turn:


Once again, this is not the whole combat log, but you get the idea. It gets worse, as Charriu makes a sneak attack on our transports (I must have miscounted his destroyers' range last turn  ). He kills our Great General Medic(!), as well as a bunch of loaded tanks on some Navigation2 transports - a significant blow. We will remember this, Charriu.   

Miguelito has also garrisoned his naval base quite heavily, and Charriu sends more fighters to get around the 4-plane limit.



However, we still have a few tricks up our sleeves:


The first nuke is shot down, but the second...


Direct hit! I thought for a while before sending the third nuke in too - I think it's worth it to save a few transports and about 16 tanks. That nuke also hits! So we raze the city with an infantry-loaded galleon. I assume there's no way we could have held it from Mig's arriving forces.  

Charriu's 3 destroyers are mopped up without losses, although he has over 10 more on the way to the fray. I have a lull in ships in this direction, which is the biggest reason to keep going Eastwards. It will be a while before I can catch up to the enemies in ship count, and nukes will only make so much difference when the enemy has them too. 

I also learned today that I'm still somewhat unclear on some air combat rules. For example, a few of my Jet Fighters got shot down this turn by Miguelito's... regular fighters? That doesn't seem right.

Domestically, we crank the wealth builds up another level. 


4-5 turns of this should see us caught back up in military tech, and then we can get straight to the whipping frenzy. I'm not sure if I'll bother speeding to Robotics, or if modern armour at Composites is the main draw. Certainly modern armour will come first, at least. 

I don't want to oversell my victories this turn. Miguelito is not ruined, and my Western Campaign is not magically saved. Presumably Mig has his own little stockpile growing somewhere, just waiting to be launched. But I do think this is a pretty significant setback to him, and should save the in-between islands in that ocean, at least buying me a couple of turns. Given how bad things looked last turn, that brings joy.  
 

Diplomatic Outreach (a.k.a. Dictatorship is Lonely)
Lazteuq and Charriu did not accept the peace. Lazteuq I totally understand - I did wreck his game after all. Charriu I find a bit more frustrating; his play for the last little while turns has sometimes just felt like "Screw Amicalola," and he's even sending Miguelito free resources. But I'm sure he has his reasons for it (and that I'm biased; the GG-Medic didn't exactly help), so I will just have to get over it. Hmph. 

Diplomatically, Ichabod sends the lone response to our offers (although Dullland has not played yet). He seems vaguely amicable to the idea of fighting Miguelito, with a non-specific (and non-committal) copper/copper response. Civac ignoring us is quite disappointing - I was hoping he'd be interested in taking Miguelito's core, but apparently not. I wonder if he's planning to hit Ichabod, maybe even conquer the Germans before the game ends. That could also be bad for me, as it turns out.   

I don't expect Dullland to reply, he's pretty obviously checked out and waiting for the game to end. So it looks as though we are still, at least for now, alone against the world. 



- - - 
   

Good god how much more destruction? Please post the F8 screen?

I wasn't 100% sure which you meant, but I think this one?


I would guess Cairo's land equates to about 8-9% more land area. So we need about 10% more (half a continent) to be not only conquered, but also held long enough to pop borders, and while growing enough population to hit 50%. To be honest, when I put it like that, it still feels like a bit of a longshot. I imagine we need to basically conquer a third continent, to have enough room to keep the initial half of it. I'm so grumpy at Charriu I'm considering hitting the Laz/Charriu continent instead of Piccadilly's one, just to try taking him out. Miguelito has also cleverly blocked me from settling the east coast:


I think this is genius, assuming it was deliberate. As my crudely-drawn line suggests, Frozen's borders will expand exactly enough to block any cities of mine from being settled here - touché Mig.  

Congratulations, you've unlocked 30% more city micro!

Țiclag is a Romanian translation of a biblical Philistine city, I tried finding the equivalent name in English on google but failed after a few minutes. I guess it's some connection to David and Goliath? But we all know Mackoti is the latter.

Oh no, don't ruin this for me! Interesting about the city; I also wonder what Mackoti was going for with the naming scheme, in that case.

Never enough Krill, Amica's dreams run red with rivers of blood and fallout, an outside context problem which all back-tech civs must fear     
Reading along has felt like watching one of those satires that stretches and stretches the joke like taffy, defying all expectations and slowly, surreally becoming an acceptable reality.

My poor future-students.  It has also felt pretty surreal to me, the last 50 or so turns. Really this whole game, like I was talking about a few posts ago - when I think back on the past year, there is just SO MUCH that has happened over the course of the game. Once upon a time, Naufragar was my biggest problem, and before that there was the worry was that Pindicator had completely knocked me out of contention! I've said it a few times, but I kind of miss those days. It was a simpler time.

[Krill]

Thank you that was the screen I wanted.

How many cities and how much population do you have?