[PB73 SPOILERS] scooter's Oracle

[xist10]

Can you spare a galeone and a frigate ? (and 3 zerkers ?) I don't think Oxy will let his city remain undefended, but I you can hope.
And If you can move in position without a "enemy in/near border" ?
I was able to burn a city with a similar move - okay, my enemy forgot to play.

[scooter]

That's great for us if he does -- it will waste more time if he tries to conquer the island.

My description wasn't quite right. Most of them he actually parked right outside Shiv - the retreating Galleons I saw are likely empty as there's only a couple which is how many empty I'd be expecting. I think he's trying to threaten my south coast and the island amphibiously at once. But he can't burn anything on the mainland (unless I've overlooked something - possible I guess), and while he could on the island, it would be insanely expensive and pointless to do it amphibiously - he'd have to land to make it efficient. So, ball is in his court, and it'll take a couple turns until he can really threaten something scary again. That's great news, because I'm getting closer and closer to being able to make a serious run at Military Science to potentially turn the tides. The path to a win is still alive even though it felt pretty hopeless a few turns ago.

I'm still on the back foot, but I'm growing more optimistic again. Which probably just means he has an idea I haven't considered. Overall though this is playing out like I predicted a month ago - namely that Oxy would have the better position and military, but he would also have the more difficult gameplan to execute. Given that we're 10T into this war, and I've only lost 3 marginal cities and he's captured 0, that alone feels like a minor victory.

Can you spare a galeone and a frigate ? (and 3 zerkers ?) I don't think Oxy will let his city remain undefended, but I you can hope.
And If you can move in position without a "enemy in/near border" ?
I was able to burn a city with a similar move - okay, my enemy forgot to play.

It's been awhile since I went over this scenario, so it's worth spelling out what would be required for this.





Here's his capital. Due to Havana, it's impossible to approach it head on out of the fog. I could sail through visibility I guess, but the odds of him not having a random Frigate in the area to sink me is incredibly low. So that's not really an option.





The other option is up here. Prior to the war I defogged up to the north pole up here very intentionally - I wanted to see if I could do this. Sadly, the ice on the signed tile rules this out. If that specific tile was ocean, I could absolutely sneak up here and hit from there. However, that route is blocked.

I could theoretically use a GG Galleon to slip up there, and MAYBE that could work. First off, GGs are hard to come by - we've had very little actual fighting in this war! But second, Oxy knows this is a lose condition, and I would bet anything he's got this area watched. Believe me, I've thought about this scenario a ton, but I just haven't been able to make it work sadly. So I think survive until Military Science is the way forward.





Someone asked about my wastward expansion recently, and I guess I never showed much. Here's my jungle core producing nicely. Don't be fooled by the relatively low population - they've been whipped for units quite a bit already. Granary + Barracks and then all units all the time while quietly growing FIN riverside cottages.





Also I settled this city on a lark awhile back because, well, just look at this. How did this even happen? Apparently I forgot to name it, and maybe I'll fix that later. I figure if I do make it to MilSci, it should be just in time for this city to whip a few boats, so why not. Plus I need my domestic IC routes since my island is blockaded.

[xist10]

Thanks.


But your right, if Oxy has a scounting ship there, this is without a real chance.
Good luck with the war.

[scooter]

Alright, it is T136, and it's time to reveal a little surprise I've cooked up. Or at least, I hope it's a surprise. More on that in a second. So, every few weeks the topic of a daring raze of Oxy's super-capital comes up, but there's always an issue preventing it. Here's a screenshot from 30 turns ago that I imagine is somewhere in this thread from one of the first times I considered this. At this stage I had a Galley in my northwest (you can just make it out on the minimap) ready to upgrade to a Galleon as soon as Astro came in, but I couldn't make it work.





The issue here is Havana and the north pole ice which makes it very hard to surprise. But not impossible. I talked around this a bit recently while hinting at my hopes.

The other option is up here. Prior to the war I defogged up to the north pole up here very intentionally - I wanted to see if I could do this. Sadly, the ice on the signed tile rules this out. If that specific tile was ocean, I could absolutely sneak up here and hit from there. However, that route is blocked.

I could theoretically use a GG Galleon to slip up there, and MAYBE that could work. First off, GGs are hard to come by - we've had very little actual fighting in this war! But second, Oxy knows this is a lose condition, and I would bet anything he's got this area watched. Believe me, I've thought about this scenario a ton, but I just haven't been able to make it work sadly. So I think survive until Military Science is the way forward.

Emphasis added now. There's exactly one vulnerable tile that is in the fog for him. 3S of the sign is a tile that is 8 moves away from Oxy's capital, and it's possible for me to get an 8-move Galleon. 4 moves default + 1 circumnav + 1 Nav1 + 1 Nav2 + 1 Morale == 8 moves. However, like I said this requires a Great General and to this point, I had not had one. Except, on the turn before I discussed all of this, I did get one .





Here's a screenshot that did not make it into the Dunkirk Escape report showing the GG in the news feed. I wondered whether any eagle-eyed observers might have noticed the GG bar reset at the top. Will be super impressed if anyone did. This finally let me get to work on the hope I've had for months.





GG upgraded a Galley -> Galleon, promoted to Sentry/Nav2/Morale, loaded up 3 good Zerks, and bon voyage. 8 moves is insane, so going around the other side of the world would take just 5-6 turns.





I've been hoping Luddite wouldn't notice or report this to ensure the surprise. I actually renamed the GG to "Galleon" to increase the likelihood he wouldn't notice . I thought about naming it something like "shh don't report" but that seemed like a borderline thing to do. No idea if he said anything, but hopefully not. Guessing not otherwise I would expect the lurker thread to be blowing up with guesses.





This was more or less the plan, although I ended up being ahead of plan by a few tiles thanks to a Luddite canal city.









Welp, time to find out if he covered this off or not. A single Frigate in one of two tiles would make this all for naught.







!!!!!!!!!

[scooter]

Here's another way to look at the impact here.





He had Kremlin, Pyramids, and Schwe Paya all here (in addition to the obsoleted Colossus).





And here's the after picture. Or for a more stark look.










Now, I'm not sure the game is necessarily won. You'll notice his army is now 50% larger than mine. That's a real, serious problem. And I can see him gearing up to take a big swing by his boat positioning. But the capture gold will complete Military Science for me, so this game is going to come down to whether I can fend off his next big swing. I have a guess at where it's going, but we'll see what I can do to cover it. It's going to be tough, but this is going to be a brutal morale hit for him.

[scooter]

Worth noting he was losing gold at what looks like 0% science at 162 GNP, and this hit cut his GNP by 2/3 (!) as that capital was doing enormous work for him in addition to the wonders. I expect him to be losing gold quite badly now. Fortunately for him, capturing my island gave him a gold infusion to stave off striking awhile longer, but I'll be closely tracking how much gold he loses on this upcoming turn.


He's got 9 Galleons loaded up aimed my direction along with a blizzard of supporting Frigates already there. I've taken my big shot and setup my defenses as best as I can, guess we'll see if he's got a big counter-attack ready to go or not.

[xist10]

I thought there was a possibility that the city is lightly guarded - I saw a few similar things in older PB -, but you are at war and this city is I think the most important city for an empire I know of.
Good luck with defending

[Krill]

Congrats on pulling off the assault. I bet you are feeling pretty smug about the Vikings right now.

[Miguelito]

[Qgqqqqq]

Congratulations Scooter! Very well played.