[SPOILERS] swans will bite u

[williams482]

wanna hear something awful? if thrawn gets hong kong, and probably even if they don't, we will have literally zero prospect of ever advancing into their core until cartography, no matter how many galleys we build. i don't mean "probably zero" i mean "literally, exactly 0.0" - the reason is because of the way galley warfare works. look at this picture:



with just 5 longships and a trickle of reinforcements, thrawn can seal off all access to the northeast permanently. one NE of mogadishu and one SW of Hong Kong are literally unbreakable with one galley attack per turn and a backup longship in the city, as they will always outheal the damage we can do with our one attack, akkad-style. then there is a one-tile choke and a two tile choke that, if occupied and backed up by a few more longships for support and to rotate in to replace damaged ones, will also be unbreakable with galleys. thrawn has enough ships to accomplish this right now if they were to teleport to their blocking positions this turn.

so both mogadishu and hong kong are lost until cartography if thrawn gets there first. and we should temper our expectations about attacking their core as this will become literally impossible as soon as thrawn has longships at the choke. and the same is true on chev's end. the absolute best-case scenario for us unless thrawn makes a colossal tactical blunder is to capture hong kong and not lose more cities, not to help chev, except insofar as we can help by drawing some of the heat away.

so once thrawn takes two CS from both of our teams and gets to 10 cities, even if they can't make further progress, they probably plan to stuff all their longships in the chokes, outheal any damage we do by rotating in fresh ships and healing the injured ones behind their lines, and race us to cartography. they will surely win that race by a mile as they will drop 10 harbors down as soon as they block the chokes and have 100 bpt overnight in free inquiry. THEN they kill someone with a mass-upgrade and a military alliance, and that's why sumeria makes sense

so the best-case scenario is this: we protect hong kong until we can take it, spread crusade to all of TAD's cities with a very fast missionary, and build out enough galleys asap to occupy chokes of our own that even infinity longships can't break. examples of such chokes can be found at asanoyama, which can be defended vs attack from the sea indefinitely with five galleys in the little bay to its NE, and our capitals, which can be defended forever with just 4 galleys and which thrawn has no hope of taking unless we are enormous idiots or they bring a land army. eventually, we retake moga either through loyalty flip or by landing ground troops. and then we have to outbuild them to cartography after all that.

well, at least we're portugal and japan! i guess...

Okay, with that out of the way:

Is there any chance we can plant Portuguese settlers as essentially combat fortifications to get Crusade in play along that narrow coastline? And potentially an additional tile to attack from. Doing so would be cumbersome, expensive, and anticipatable in advance, which given the long front makes it a fairly hopeless strategy, but perhaps with careful timing it could work once to break open an otherwise precariously stalemated situation. Turn order is in our favor there, this would never have a chance if Japan moved ahead of Portugal instead of after.

[ljubljana]

yeah!! crusade has a key role to play i think. with just one missionary i should be able to spread to either TAD's two existing cities or to MoM and Hong Kong, from which I think TAD can bootstrap to the rest of their island with free spreads alone.

Here is is, our homage to trench warfare, our stalemate line (to misappropriate a Diplomacy term):



Just FOUR ships, supported by Crusade and with reinforcements to replace the injured, can block thrawn's westward progress forever. Well, given that we can find a way to extend this line north to wherever Chev's equivalent ends and south to the edge of the board, which are big ifs. But if we can staff chokes like this one long-term I think we can hold off the hordes and find the room we need to build out infrastructure.

but we HAVE TO get hong kong or everything falls apart, of course if the galley moves then TAD can possibly try it with the ships in the area, if not (and i think it likely won't) we can kill it with Crusade. but if it were up to me, i'd say we abandon moga (incredibly painful) and look for a choke north of Hong Kong that we can use, in conjunction with this one, to keep them away from the city for long enough to take it with Crusade or for the galley situation to change.

also i think MoM must finish a settler before it grows or i won't be able to convert it with one charge, lmao.

[ljubljana]

wait shit do i need shipbuildling to embark missionaries

[ljubljana]

yes, of course i do:



so fast missionary plan is out as well

[williams482]

Wait, so what is stopping Thrawn from just going around any defensive line we set? I very much doubt that Mogadishu's island extends all the way to the pole.

[ljubljana]

i mean..... most likely nothing, really i guess we are going to have to hope that in forcing them to go around us we can buy enough time to get our acts together, or force their ships to separate in a way that negates their numerical advantage...

[further defeatism censored to protect morale ]

[ljubljana]

here is some luck for me personally and my anxious brain - chev is holding the turn, which means i don't have to

i was wondering how i was going to apologize for that in the tech thread without spoiling that something was up...

roughly 7 more hours until monday morning in austria. hopefully TAD will have better ideas than i have had about how to make a game out of this

[ljubljana]

Summary post for TAD

The situation has become very critical very quickly in the 5 turns that have passed since last week. Unfortunately, Norway is your eastern neighbor - we learned this from feature names on t42, on t43 they appeared with two longships (one promoted), and on t44 they attacked Mogadishu. Thrawn has 6 cities, 4 of them captured city-states, and 461 milpower as of now - with twice the cities of the next-biggest player and likely as much milpower as rest of the world combined, they require an immediate global coalition against them or they will run away with the game in the next 10-20 turns. They also have shipbuilding, so their longships can cross ocean squares and will probably find many opportunities to grow this lead with further conquests. They met CMF/incurian two turns before us as well, and since that team has been struggling in the domination rankings, I expect they are in worse shape than we are and may take more of the heat in the immediate-term. Still, though, the situation on our end is highly concerning:



I sent your ships east as quickly as I could, but I am not sure we can stop them from taking Mogadishu, especially if there are more than the 2 longships we saw. We only have 1 coastal tile to attack the longships from, and their promoted ship has a +12 CS edge on your galleys - they may be able to kill one of your ships with just 2 longship attacks. All three of your ships in the north are very close to promotion, if they can survive that long, but the southern galley is fresh. Thrawn has been averaging about 50 damage per turn, so if we do nothing, they will probably get the city around t48-49.

We do have some good one and two-tile chokes facing Norway that we can occupy to negate their mobility and numbers advantage. I imagine that in the medium-term we will want to hold them at coastal chokes like the ones I pinned here, force thrawn to go around us, and hopefully build more ships to meet them in the time it takes them to do so. However, thrawn has good defensive chokes on their end, too, and it will very difficult to advance into their core or to take back any city-state conquests, as they have enough longships to block off our attack routes and outheal the damage we can do with our galleys.

When we met Norway, I felt I had to swap your builds to galleys - you are in Colonization, though, and will probably need some boosted settlers sooner rather than later. You did get the CelNav boost, but I swapped you to Mining research when Norway appeared, so that you can chop either galleys or settlers if you think we have to. I didn't use any other builder charges, so you have 4 left to spend on chops if necessary. If you want, you might even be able to skip the rice farm in favor of chops, as I have Irrigation 3t from completion and can get the boost for you if necessary. Mining research also gets you closer to walls, in case you think we need to go for those next... You are also much closer to State Workforce than it appears as I will finish it in 3 turns to get the boost for you.



In the north, you have another city-state neighbor, Hong Kong. When we met them on turn 40, I immediately sent all your ships in the area to attack, not even stopping to fully heal since the injured ships are close to promotion and we were getting good odds against the city center. But the turn before the attack, they spawned a galley, which forced me to abandon that plan. The galley has so far not left the city in the 3 turns since it spawned, and will probably stay there for a while...

I think Norway's homeland is either to the east or northeast of Hong Kong, as the sea to the NE has a Norwegian name. I consider it essential for us to find a way to block the longships from reaching the ocean west of Hong Kong, as both HK and your second city will be very difficult to defend against attack from the ocean. I am hoping we can find defensive chokes in the northeast that we can occupy to accomplish this, or at least buy us some time, but we would have to move fast as they may already have ships in the area and definitely have some on the way. Your second city in particular is very vulnerable right now, and we may have to reposition to defend it since longships might appear to hit it from the north at any time.

Also, we need to find a way to capture Hong Kong ourselves as quickly as possible. I am not sure how many ships it will take to capture the city if the galley stays inside, though, and Norway likely already has ships on their way to contest us. But I think we have to do something here, as if Norway takes Hong Kong, they can put one longship 1SW of the city and one in the city center and hold the position forever, outhealing any damage we can do with just one galley attack per turn. The same is true at Mogadishu, but I don't see many good options for us to prevent that...



My cities are also all on galleys, except for Hakuho which is halfway done with a boosted settler. My second city swapped off a half-finished Feed the World shrine to start boats, and is stuck at size 2 and not growing due to housing - my third city swapped off a half-finished monument to start boats as well. Hakuho is only on a settler because it looks like we can't spare ships for scouting anymore, so it will be very difficult to get Monumentality. I believe I can do it, but I will need a +3 holy site at the new city, a +3 campus at Hakuho, a PoliPhil discovery before turn 61, and 3 era score from clearing the barb camp. This plan means some major sacrifices - I would have to build the Government Plaza in a bad location at the former Geneva, since we can't afford to delay Victor's third promotion until I get another district slot. I would also have to put Hakuho's campus either 1W of the city, which has much worse adjacencies than planned, or 1NW-2W of the city, which requires a third-ring tile buy (let me know which of these you prefer). But it should guarantee me a golden age without spending any of our precious ships on scouting, barring any surprises.

Unfortunately, we might get a surprise, as I think 3 players have a classical tech already or are about to, so the era change might come early, in which case I am screwed and might miss it. In any case, we should be careful about spending gold for the next few turns (until t51), just in case we need to do something desperate to secure Monumentality...

On the bright side, if I don't do any more scouting and we don't make more contacts, you may be still be able to get a dark age for Twilight Valor. You would have to delay finishing both CelNav and PoliPhil to make that happen, though, as just one more era score point will put you over the line.

I also have a second city-state neighbor, but here the news is better than at Hong Kong:



It will be ours this turn, and we will be up to 3 Embolon Japan galleys. It also comes with a free holy site for Monumentality and a free monument for Oligarchy.

Williams, please feel free to add anything that I might have missed or that you think is worth specifically mentioning

[TheArchduke]

Haha, we are the 2nd one in power?

Yeah this game will end with thrawn winning in 20 turns.

[TheArchduke]

Ok, our 4 ships are not really strong enough to stop 4 longships.

Check out the save.

I would recommend forfeiting this to thrawn.

His first longship has embolon and we miss any basic boost to galleys like Oligarchy. I mean we are not going to die quickly, but he will every CS that is not eaten already.