[PB79] MirOh No, what am I doing?

[Miro]

6) I just started teching again this turn, built up a 1K bank in case I needed to upgrade more. I'll finish Economics this turn, then I'm gunning for corps with constitution. I want to start Mining Inc ASAP.
Oxford finishes in 3T - 5T, so I'll check if maintaining a bank until it finishes would affect Mining Inc's start date. (Edit: IIRC Constitution would take ~2T, Corps ~2T, and I lose -200gpt)

After corps, I wasn't sure. Combustion, Assembly Line, and Communism seem like the only goals worth considering.
I want to draft Infantry and already have Steam Power, but if things settle down between coldrain and me, then I'm confident enough in my army against xist pushes, so I'd aim for Combustion.
Kremlin sounds great. I'm guessing I won't get it in time, but I'll see what xist's tech is like after I finish corps. AFAIK, nobody has started Scientific Method yet. Had 7T - 8T where I couldn't see xist's tech after he finished corps. Pretty sure he got Steel during that time, unsure if he got anything else.

I'm not considering Biology much, but I'll at least count my farms to see how useful it is in terms of whips/drafts.

7) Also - I've just been holding onto the free execs I got from CtH mod. Not used to that. Should I kill the Creative Constructions exec or put it in 1 city, then never spread?

[greenline]

I'd be very curious to see any sort of chart of the tech situation in the game, as a lurker.

[Miro]

I'd be very curious to see any sort of chart of the tech situation in the game, as a lurker.

Edit: Updated after checking techs on T199.

[Miro]

T199:

(Updated tech post above)

coldrain declined the offer. I resent the 1st message as [ DoW xist, stop trading xist, Gold (28) ]. I added the gold part to say, "We both have 28 cities, he's ahead in tech, let's not have bloodshed." I understand he might misinterpret it as, "I have 28 cities, I'll stay 28 cities (coldrain keep Smash Up), let's stop war." Whatever gets him to stop the war is fine by me.

Gira accepted open borders and declined the [ -stop trading xist, +Dye ] offer.

I was thinking about going through Dutch waters to get around the Ironclads and harass over there, but thinking ahead - it'd be a useless navy harass and he'd pick away at it with new Ironclads, then clean up with chasing Frigates. So my northern navy is in full retreat to the canal after seeing xist's 7 Ironclads, 4 SoL, 13 Frigates in a conga line starting to invade.

I'd love my 3rd GA to start in 15T - 20T, but I need some luck. BoC will make a new GP in ~13T and currently has 51% chance of generating a GS or GA which I already have. I'm adding specialists in hopes of getting something else.

Forgot to mention I got a GS a while back that I used to bulb SciMethod +2.2k beakers. Figured he wasn't good for anything else.

coldrain reinforced Ticket to Ride again with ~4 Cannons and ~2 Riflemen. I upgraded a Machine Gun (+Pinch +City Garrison +Combat1 +Drill1) and added a Rifle+Cho there to bring his ~55% vodka win rate down to <10%.

Miro + Coldrain (visible) unit numbers:



Dems/Charts:

[Mjmd]

1) Did his army move? Where is it now? You may just have to violently end the war. Xist on land is probably looking to get factories / coal plants up. Although maybe infantry quickly is on the table. Either way if Coldrain doesn't take the hint only having 1 front war would be helpful. Could also use any eastern fleets west.

7) Create con free exec I like keeping. I got burned by deleting in PB66. Figure out if there is a city that really needs the culture to control a key tile.

2) I actually think you want to delay your next GA for a while now. You are behind and I kind of want to use post regaining pop / assembly line (prefer after, but maybe during and switch to org just during). Factory / coal plan GAs are pretty disgusting.

3) Duplicate scientist not a bad idea to use on bulbs. To note do before whipping as beaker amount dependent on pop.

4) Other than GNP those graphs look ok considering how long you've been in a 2v1 war and how much whipping and drafting you've been doing. And to be clear I'm fully in support of continuing to do so to get Coldrain out.

[Miro]

1) Did his army move? Where is it now? You may just have to violently end the war. Xist on land is probably looking to get factories / coal plants up. Although maybe infantry quickly is on the table. Either way if Coldrain doesn't take the hint only having 1 front war would be helpful. Could also use any eastern fleets west.

1) His army moved to 1NE of Smash Up. That might normally be in FoW, but I still have espionage vision on most or all of his cities so I see him just standin' there menacingly and all. If I take the city (~5 units), I can hit his stack same turn.

Yeah the eastern fleet was meant to fight his fleet at some point, but I'm not reinforcing it so it's just idling. I guess it's blocking him from pushing in towards other cities. His 5 Galleons are still in his fleet, so a quick pickup of 15 units can be dreadful if he could push in. I've been worried about him hitting my coastal city near Ticket to Ride like that, but I think I'll be prepared in time if he tries it. Other cities along that coast, not so much.

[Tarkeel]

T198:
coldrain turned his army around and didn't hit Ticket to Ride, but his army isn't retreating atm. 2 Galleons are bringing up the rear, so they might be for retreating or reinforcing. I added 2 more Machine Guns to Ticket to Ride (+Drill 2), so I feel safe there.

Just a friendly notice; while you might know the location of TTR like the back of your hand, for the rest of us it really helps if you include a picture of the relevant theatre.

Xist has an Ironclad force pushing in the north. Are we still sure Ironclads are trash? Given this map, I'm unsure.
(..)
(Q1): Should I reconsider building some Ironclads on this map or just run around his Ironclads? My navies aren't trying to invade islands (I have zero Galleons), just prevent their invasions.

Ironclads aren't trash, but they are a niche unit. They do excel at defending naval chokepoints, which usually are pretty rare.

(Q2): Y'all use spies to spy? I know missions are off, but if coldrain has a few spies around, then he'd know my army isn't about to demolish his from FoW.

Spies are extremely powerful to spot traps.

(Q3): If a player is inactive in their thread, do you take that to mean anything or is that pretty normal in the late game? Before coldrain's small mistake, I noticed he hadn't posted in his thread for a month or more - back during his war with xist. I took that to mean he was losing interest in the game (understandable) and was upset with xist (oh do I know the feeling!). I wasn't surprised he DoW'd me, but was surprised at how committed he is. Not just that he's working alongside xist, but that he sent a big army, big navy, and is reinforcing and still whipping seriously:

For your own sanity, I'd advice you to try to ignore the forum as much as possible while playing. While there can be a correlation between posting and dedication, it's not always so.

[Miro]

(...)

Just a friendly notice; while you might know the location of TTR like the back of your hand, for the rest of us it really helps if you include a picture of the relevant theatre.

(Q3): If a player is inactive in their thread, do you take that to mean anything or is that pretty normal in the late game? (...)

For your own sanity, I'd advice you to try to ignore the forum as much as possible while playing. While there can be a correlation between posting and dedication, it's not always so.

Good points, I can reinclude pictures for each post to help visualize when I bring up city names.

I dislike metagaming in general, but his thread activity caught my eye after long enough so I had to ask.

Here's the general picture I have for major forces out on the map right now. Multiple dots = more units. I don't have vision of xist's main army, but it should be around there.
I didn't mention coldrain's minor navy in the west earlier; his west navy has no Galleons and is just something like ~4 SoL + 6 Frigate so I'm not worried about it. My navy over can handle them until xist's navy in the south waters recovers.

[Miro]

T200 UPDATE:

We reached T200! I don't want to update every turn even though we're in war, but it's T200, baby!

xist just sent us a 10T peace treaty, so now we can rest up and NA will finally (probably) agree to peace now in a 1v1!

Gira built this funny lil city to gain a FP and enjoy the mountain view, so it's been a fun lil T200 as all starts to turn back to normal.



I should have Mining Inc. in 3T and we can get back to the eco-building side of the game.

Problem is - my damned pen ran out of ink. I can't sign that peace treaty.

But I can invade. "Miro, no! Don't do it!" Too late. Also too late to screen grab the army I invaded with Don't wanna make a login mistake again even though turn hasn't rolled.

I built some railroads and invaded with 55 - 60 units to the hill adjacent to Arretium, xist's closest city on the north shore. I believe my stack includes 2 Machine Guns, 8 - 12 Cannons, 8 - 12 Knights, 10+ Riflemen, 8+ Muskets, 10+ Cho-ko-nu, 1 Worker (a mistake I'll learn from, I see why others added Workers to their invasion force earlier -- the hill has no road). I'll SS it before and after next turn, assuming it survives.

There are 13 Knights at Rome's other city. They are in range of my stack and I believe he has 10 - 20 units near the mountain. But I mean, I have Machine Guns on a hill.



And before you say, "But you could lose the stack!!" You're right, but I did some math and learned how the "soldiers" tab in the demographics screen works. Adding in some estimates, xist should have about 133 useful units (no Warriors/Archers).



I'm using 11,000 soldiers per unit, so Knight-Grenadier level.

Factoring in the large navies and island forces I have vision of, I figure that the worst-case scenario means he has a stack of 50 - 60 ready to fight. More likely, 25 - 40 (including the Knights). Especially because his power chart has only declined since the start of the war. And he doesn't have Rifling. He can draft Muskets and use Grenadiers, Knights, Muskets, Catapults/Cannons to fight my stack on a hill.

I'm aiming to raze the city and consider replacing with a Settler later. Sure hurts to raze cities...

If coldrain pushes, that could be a problem. Really wish I had that 2nd Worker invading.

I did grab a full screenshot before ending turn: [yes, I accidentally drafted at Battleball (Moai city) once.]

[Mjmd]

Good luck! I don't hate it some damage does need done to him. Being on a hill does help and he may not have known you were coming. You know what would be really helpful here? A combat settler!!!   (if you have one anyways, then ignore this)