[SPOILERS] scooter Expands the Empire Across the Sea

[scooter]

By the way, SD played as I posted this. He obviously did not accept peace, so I logged in to see what inevitable counter I got. In true SD fashion I got some wild ones.


1) Straight cease fire. I toyed with the idea of accepting briefly. There were no obvious unit in sight. I wondered if there may be benefit to other players seeing we were back at peace. But I figured the main reason he might do this is he doesn't like my Frigate positioning, so I rejected.


2) Offered peace in exchange for me giving him all 3 of those cities and 9k gold via 900gpt . Honestly I might have considered it for all 3 cities, honestly. But 9k gold is hilarious.

[Zed-F]

Re: GG -- Well I think we want a 10XP unit so we can potentially build a Heroic Epic, I agree that otherwise I'd probably prefer to sprinkle on boats and upgrade an older unit to a Grenadier. I'm not sure if that means we would be sprinkling on 2 or 3 units.

Re: Ubaryd -- yeah that's a painful whip alright, hopefully it can grow back up to 15-16 range relatively soon. That's not a city we want to keep whipping.

Re: Trying to buy off SD with Bawating -- yeah worth the attempt, but I didn't think this was going anywhere. Maybe he can be talked into a more reasonable proposition, but even that seems like a kinda remote possibility.

[scooter]

Re: GG -- Well I think we want a 10XP unit so we can potentially build a Heroic Epic, I agree that otherwise I'd probably prefer to sprinkle on boats and upgrade an older unit to a Grenadier. I'm not sure if that means we would be sprinkling on 2 or 3 units.

Re: Ubaryd -- yeah that's a painful whip alright, hopefully it can grow back up to 15-16 range relatively soon. That's not a city we want to keep whipping.

Re: Trying to buy off SD with Bawating -- yeah worth the attempt, but I didn't think this was going anywhere. Maybe he can be talked into a more reasonable proposition, but even that seems like a kinda remote possibility.

Re: Ubaryd, only a 2 pop whip and a 14F surplus, so not THAT bad. But I'd prefer to have not done it for sure.


Re: SD, Yeah agreed. I think the main thing I want to convey to him is that I am open for business and reasonable, especially if he does not get the dramatic dogpile he probably hopes he's signed up for.

[T-hawk]

That might be an RB record - how often does a 35 city empire try to give one in concession to an 18 city empire?

[scooter]

That might be an RB record - how often does a 35 city empire try to give one in concession to an 18 city empire?

I think we're in a lot of uncharted waters here to use a game-appropriate metaphor. Part of why we haven't seen something like this is that, for better or worse, games are usually conceded with much smaller leads than this. What I'm curious about is when have we seen a larger lead than this not conceded? I think the game settings are contributing here. It's just so expensive to amphibiously invade someone, and it also requires a degree of tedium that I have wanted to avoid. The smash and grabs worked, but that's the kind of thing that works once.





Related, a screenshot I took today but didn't post that made me laugh.

[Zed-F]

Did you wind up starting the Kremlin in Pale instead since Nationalism will be delayed? I notice Unta didn't start it, but don't see a similar shot of Pale.

[scooter]

Did you wind up starting the Kremlin in Pale instead since Nationalism will be delayed? I notice Unta didn't start it, but don't see a similar shot of Pale.

No, last turn I set everything possible to Wealth in case I needed emergency upgrades. But the net result was that the unit I had on 49/50 completed this turn, not last turn. So it'll start next turn with some overflow, but it hadn't begun quite yet.

[Krill]

PBBEM4V wasn't conceded and that was an actual MA and bombers v. Inf as the final show down in a true conwuest victory. Not that any game before PB7 doesn't exist...

[scooter]

I sent Cairo a fish-fish last turn in hopes I could assure him I wasn't interested in a round 2. He's been building up units, but not in an extreme way, and he's been playing fast turns. Besides, Yuris took from him too, so he's got no real reason to prefer one of us over the other. He echoed it back. So I'm hoping that means he's going to stay out of this war entirely and keep coasting for awhile. I am attempting to reinforce a couple spots near him just in case.


And by this war, I mean I got tired of waiting. I've been waiting for Yuris to get complacent with his boats. So far he's been careful, but this turn he screwed up.





I'm specifically talking about the Privateers in boxes. Because he does not have Frigates, these are his best units. They will lose to Frigates comfortably, but if you promote them to C1 and have them defend your Galleon stack on a coast, you can expect them to win the occasional fight. In other words, they'll do enough to protect your Galleons for a turn so you can do your damage. I've been looking every turn for a good opportunity to alpha strike them without compromising my own defenses, and I think this turn I finally found my opening. I have 4 C1 Frigates in range of all 5 of these Privateers. Crucially, Yuris has not promoted them yet, which improves my odds further. In addition, killing these is worth 3XP, which means if any Frigates win and survive, they can promote. Him losing these Privateers would be crippling.





So enough waiting for the inevitable, let's first strike.





Win: 5.3h left, promo available





Win: 6.6h left, promo available

Perfect start. Very good chance both Frigates survive to promote next turn at those health levels.





Win: FLAWLESS, promo available

Enormous result.





Win: 2.6h left, promo available

The one dice roll where I was weakened enough to kill was the Frigate underneath the flawless win.


In addition to all of this, I killed 3 random Caravels throughout the world that were in range of my boats.





Then I moved up my reserve Frigates like this. I have two Frigates covering the fort entryways. He could maybe punch through them with lucky RNG, but it would cost him so many boats it surely won't be worth it. A third one pushed up to Nagoya itself to make it harder for him to escape down towards Black Coral. If he tries to exit in an aggressive way, I should be able to sink the Galleons at sea.


I'm not sure where he goes next. This is a back-breaker of a turn for him as I've wiped out the vast majority of his non-Galleon fleet. Without those Privateers, he cannot sail out onto the water. I offered him white peace. I would be shocked if he accepts, but I also do not see how he can possibly make gains. If he refuses, I think I choke out his coast with my Frigates and ease the pressure on my cities that way. I'd like him to complete the fort so I can pillage it, for example. It constantly being nearly complete is a huge security risk.





Empire shot. To top all of this off, I was able to 1T Nationalism with just a dash of Research thanks to the civic swap giving me a nice commerce boost. I glossed over the SD front this turn, but mostly I just reinforced it with a couple more Grens. I pushed forward with a Frigate (flawless killing a Yuris Caravel) and confirmed SD did withdraw most of his Galleons. He does have a pair of them in his nearest city, but that won't be enough. I have a couple more Frigates joining that front.













Can and will speed this one a tad with some tweaks, but generally it will be a slow-ish build. Any questions?

[scooter]

PBBEM4V wasn't conceded and that was an actual MA and bombers v. Inf as the final show down in a true conwuest victory. Not that any game before PB7 doesn't exist...

Always appreciate a good deep cut.