[PB70] The Cartographic Correction Committee convenes

[Tarkeel]

Yeah, this is the phase where IND really shines.

[Commodore]

Yeah, this is the phase where IND really shines.

Wait until you hit Assembly Line as ORG, it feels amazing.

[Tarkeel]

Yeah, this is the phase where IND really shines.

Wait until you hit Assembly Line as ORG, it feels amazing.

Are you forgetting what I played in PB58? :P

[scooter]

Another turn, another 6 units as you can see on the right-hand side below. I believe all 4 of those Swords were 1-turned off CKN whip overflows. However, I'm showing this picture today because it's Gripe About Allies Time.





I'm trying hard to remain allied with Charriu but holy moly man. Can you even tell he's "preparing" for war? On one side he has the chance to expand his smallest in the world empire, and on the other side he has Mjmd's spike which will only be protected for 19 more turns and is only protected because I made it happen for him and he continues playing SimCity. This game is mind boggling at times.


This is important because one of the way this Bing war could end is exchanging cities for peace. Of course, when you 2v1 someone in full diplo, bailing first and getting the better deal is a bit of a backstab. Let's say Bing is willing to hand over 3 cities peacefully. Charriu would of course expect to get one. But why should he? I'm clearly contributing 90% of the effort here. But I'm afraid of doing that and isolating myself completely diplomatically.


The thing I've noticed in this game is Charriu and Superdeath both seem to have the One More Tech syndrome going on. I offered SD an arranged 3v1 on Mjmd in which he would gain the most and he said "eh no thanks, need to tech" as if the guy we'd be 3v1'ing was not also going to tech during that time - and at a faster rate. If Charriu had it his way we'd delay this Bing attack a few more turns so he could add a couple Muskets, seemingly ignoring the possibility that Bing adds elephants and catapults during that time. I think Mjmd would have been in the same boat as these two, but as soon as he realized the Astro play was happening he started building units. (I'm sure it's a total coincidence it began the turn after I suggested the plan to Superdeath. )


Anyway, this is mostly just me venting. I need an ally, and Charriu has been one and will continue to be one, but hoo boy do I not understand the passivity. Nobody wants to build military, and Mjmd only did it because I scared him, as far as I can tell. He was planning to just tech to Rifles before I rudely jolted him.

[scooter]

Oh, we go in T138. Turn pace in this game has slowed dramatically, so that's probably not going to be tomorrow. But I can hope.

[scooter]

This is what I'm referring to. Do you know what those -20 point events are? They're triple whips. In other words, those are not units. Would bet my life those are 4 universities - or in this case the Russian UB in CtH. I'm 2 turns from war, and my war ally just spent 12 population on universities.


To be fair, Mjmd is surely pulling his hair out right now over Bing more or less doing the same thing right now by building 0 catapults and slowly teching Machinery for Xbows rather than quickly grabbing HBR for Horchers and Elephants, all the while not really whipping any units. So I guess it all evens out in the end.

[scooter]

Alright, let's take a look at the plan. I had expected to post this sooner, and then Bing started reacting which meant I needed to be more flexible. However, it's nearly go time, so it's time to unveil the situation and explain the rough approach here. It's important to understand my strengths and weaknesses here. The weakness is my attacks by land struggle to trade hammer efficiently. Skirmishers are 25h and with Protective + cheap Walls + city defense + sometimes hill defense, they're legitimately tough to crack. I've got Sword and CKNs. That means I'm quite unlikely to really win hammer exchanges. The strength is the mobility advantage. Bing has no 2-movers and no Engineering, so he's limited to moving his Skirmishers 2 tiles at a time. Meanwhile, Galleons can move 4 tiles, and most of his cities are coastal.


As a result, the basic approach is to lightning strike down the coast and prevent him from reinforcing. I need enough boats and units on them to credibly threaten to burn core coastal cities. If I do that, it will force him to make an impossible choice. Does he stream units 2 tiles at a time towards the front and watch his backlines get burned, or does he keep them in place and let me easily take front cities? I'd be happy to burn cities in the back - generally the goal is to make some gains quickly in order to start knocking down his build queues. If I can do that, I can overwhelm him on pure production, which again is vital given the information I just discussed - that I can't really trade super efficiently against him.


So the choice was made. We're going to attack both coasts off boats with a land-based group advancing on the ground. Let's take a look.


Western Theater




Red Dot represents the staging tile. All 4 Galleons will be in there this turn. One caveat - the yellow circle represents a weird choice by Bing. That Skirmisher was 2SE last turn, and I thought it was moving into Awdaghost. However, he moved here instead. I think he's going to move into my land next turn to see if he can watch for signs of me. That would be great if he did. If I have to tweak the staging tile, that's fine. Anyway, inside the blue box are 4 Galleons. They will be pretty much full - at least 11 units, maybe the full 12. This will be primarily CKNs with a couple Swords and maybe a misc unit.


On the opening turn of the war I'll have a decision to make. If Awdaghost is not reinforced, I'll likely take it amphibiously. It'll be quite costly as it's on a hill, but the additional cost is not much worse than letting him reinforce. If he does reinforce, I'll drop some units on the hill and capture the city the following turn. There's no amount of Skirmishers he can mass in time to save the city - I simply have too many CKNs. One weird quirk of this is that the "ideal" number of Skirms in a city seems to be like 4. Once it gets beyond that, by the time the 5th or 6th defender is defending, it's been collateral'd so hard it's barely worth much. Basically, losses attacking 4 defenders and attacking 6 defenders are almost the same in many cases. So, the open question here is how many units will taking this city cost me. I don't really know right now. I'm hoping to have as many available afterwards as possible because of the next phase.




Part of why my staging tile on the opening turn is only 3 tiles away from Awdaghost rather than 4 is to open up this the next turn. Agades is defended OK last time I looked at it, but Walata is not, and Katsina is outright empty. I may not have many healthy hitters, but if these are defended by 0-1 units, it'll be easy razes. Crucially, even if I'm unable to burn any, Bing will be forced to keep defenders home in these cities rather than send them away 2 tiles at a time. This will be hellishly annoying for him to defend, and given his general preference to play turns very quickly, I'm hoping I can force him into some mistakes.




The most unorthodox choice I'm making in this invasion - outright ignoring this city. I will not be moving anything next to it immediately. He's piled 4 Skirms into it, but if the cities behind it fall, it's doomed. I figure there's two ways this plays out. First, he could make a mistake and try to attack out or leave the city in some way, and I gain that way. Second, he could hole up, and I can take it out at my leisure with units streaming in that are missing the first wave of attacks - such as the units all getting whipped from Shandong, Hangzhou, Xian, and Chengdu even after the attack is underway. To me I need to strike further more quickly, and spending 5 turns walking up, hitting it, healing, and then marching forward through culture would be a mistake. So I'm gonna come back to this one.


The Eastern Theater

The eastern theater I have quite a bit more units.




Here's my core land-based army. It will setup next to Tekedda on T138 and hopefully capture it on T139. There will be 10-11 units ready here. That might not sound like a lot, but with 9 CKNs included in that, it'll be incredibly difficult for him to save the city. Of course, if he somehow manages to stuff enough units in, there will be naval support. So let's talk about that.




Group A is 2 full Galleons that will be "on time" and to the staging tile adjacent to Xian. Group B will be exactly 4 tiles behind, or in other words "1 turn" behind as it catches some stragglers streaming in.




Hopefully the sign makes sense. That is where Galleons will be located at the end of T138 for Group A and T139 for Group B. A former version of this plan had me boating Taghaza with the hopes of taking his Gems off the table immediately. Since then he added walls and another unit or two, so my current inclination is to simply bypass the islands as he won't be able to use them to reinforce the mainland anyway. I also have the option on T139 (the turn I attack Tekedda) to join in that fight amphibiously. I don't think it will be necessary, but it's really helpful to have the option. Finally, the other option.




Same deal as the western front. Let's sail south and see what we can burn or tie down. Burning Taodeni would be quite nice as it's his source of horses. Djenne is a practically empty core city. There's also the wild option of dropping 6 units on a beeline towards Timbuktu. Unlikely I could capture it, but I could tie units down, and soon after join up with units from Tekedda. Point is that there's options to be had here.


And that's the plan. It feels pretty good right now, but let's see what actualy happens once we get going. There's a bunch of other things here too to consider that I'm not going to fully write up. But some stray thoughts.


* Bing's lack of units beyond Skirms makes it incredibly hard for him to ever attack me. That lets me choose most of my fights.

* Some Galleons will obviously be empty after the first fights. However, empty Galleons can be useful bluff tools. In addition, some can go back and pickup more reinforcements which will be coming constantly. I expect I'll do some Galleon-chaining to get units to the frontlines quickly.

* This completely leaves out Charriu, but he does have a plan to join. He's going to send a small stack at a southern Bing city that he ought to be able to capture. He'll be joining 1 turn after me, or potentially 2 turns after me depending on Bing's reactions.

* I'm expecting each of these highlighted cities to add some Skirms. How much I'm able to do will depend heavily on how much more he can actually muster.

[Qgqqqqq]

Thanks for the update!

What are your minimum and maximum war goals? Do you have any contingencies? What are you most worried about?

[scooter]

Thanks for the update!

What are your minimum and maximum war goals? Do you have any contingencies? What are you most worried about?

To me, minimum is Awlil, Tekedda, and Awdaghost - the 3 northern mainland cities. If I was able to capture Tekedda and Awdaghost quickly as planned, and Bing offered peace for Awlil + maybe Gems island, I would very seriously consider that. The catch of course is I'd have to worry about how it impacts Charriu.

Maximum is I keep going towards the capital. This especially opens up if he makes some mistakes that let me burn coastal cities, in which case I ought to be able to coalesce everything around the capital in a way that makes me realy hard to stop.


Contingencies, well, tactically as you can see I've got a ton baked in. Strategically, I guess any signs of a NAP-stab would do it. However, I've got OB with both Mjmd and SD (SD refused to close after all and Mjmd re-opened), so I'll have a unit in both territory's keeping an eye out.


Finally, I'm most worried about Bing massing better units quickly enough to stalemate me given my relatively low strength attackers, refusing to sign peace, and me not being able to get out of the conflict in time. This might be something like mass elephants. That fear is closing rapidly as I believe he still does not even have HBR, but it would make my stack uncomfortable. Fortunately, I should be finishing Civil Service in a few turns, at which point I'll mix in some Maces.

[scooter]

Thanks for the update!

What are your minimum and maximum war goals? Do you have any contingencies? What are you most worried about?

To me, minimum is Awlil, Tekedda, and Awdaghost - the 3 northern mainland cities. If I was able to capture Tekedda and Awdaghost quickly as planned, and Bing offered peace for Awlil + maybe Gems island, I would very seriously consider that. The catch of course is I'd have to worry about how it impacts Charriu.

Realized I should expand slightly on this point. Right now I'm at 17 cities, and Mjmd is at 18. Adding those 3 cities gets me to 20, and I have two strong backfill spots that I only put off because the increased maintenance would have slowed me to Astro, but I'd backfill those and be at 22. That's with just the minimum gains. I've also not fired any Golden Ages yet, so I could take those and then launch a pair of Golden Ages on 22 cities and see if I can catapult further ahead and mitigate dogpile risks. So that's why if I come out of this just +3 in cities, I'd be content. Now, I'd like a couple more obviously.