[PB79] MirOh No, what am I doing?

[Mjmd]

Q2) to be fair there is a difference between think you can and actually doing. You didn't know what he had coming. Still he is down 3 ports which is important.
Q3) ya that is pretty much the difference. TLDR split up a lot, which also protects nicely from nukes. Hopefully you win before those though.
Q4) heh combat settler / resettling a future island.

[klops]

couple turn later:
"oh btw, I lied about not planting that city. It just looks sooo much better"

[Miro]

couple turn later:
"oh btw, I lied about not planting that city. It just looks sooo much better" 

 I'm becoming predictable!
I was tempted - especially after seeing xist's new city:


I was way wrong about the tech situation though!
It's T239 right now and here are the turns the 3 of us finish(ed) Electricity:

• Xist: T238
  
• Gira: T239
  
• Miro: T240
  

Xist is burning through his bank, gunning for Industrialization by T244.
I'm also scheduled to finish it on T244! Hot damn!
Hell, I'm even making money while at +100% Research. Shifted my Observatory and University cities to build Research.

Cereal Mills gives xist +7 food per city though. That's gonna be strong with Kremlin.

coldrain is finishing Democracy next turn.

[Miro]

T244 Pre-War Update:

The Peace Treaty ends T245. Will we go all-out war? Depends on if xist's southern islands stay vulnerable.

Summary:

• Tech/Wonder/Civic Situation
  
• Global Militaries
  
• Theaters of War
  

• Charts/Dems
  
• Battleship Warfare Problem
  
• Questions
  

Techs/Wonders/Civics:
T242: xist completed Notre Dame, coldrain's GA ended.
Xist finished Industrialism T242, I finished it T243, so we both finished faster than I expected last week.







Global Militaries:

Now that I have 5 Airships doing recon, I have a lot of vision. Some notable forces might still be in FoW, but I think we've got most/all the info we need for now.




I have about 10 Battleships finishing this turn and some Tanks in production. No Marines. I didn't realize I had so many Destroyers - I even halted Destroyer production for about 8T during this peace treaty.

Theaters of War:

I'm not planning any land invasions this time, but I'm doing recon in case xist or Gira try to come from the east. Nothing notable scouted over there, just 10 total units in xist's border cities.

North Sea:


I'm planning to keep those Destroyers in Boss Monster so xist/Gira will need to have a large commitment if they want to defend and/or blockade cities. I'm producing Machine Guns in Betrayal HotH, will swap that to Tanks or Marines in a bit. Those units will probably just be used to bolster the northern islands. Next turn I'll also load 1 Transport at the edge of my canal with Cannons to help combat sieges on northern islands.

My north coast cities can all withstand 1 - 2 Transports. I asked Gira for open borders so I can go hit that 1 Transport if xist just leaves it up there.

South Sea:


Xist replaced his canal as soon as we reached peace. He doesn't have enough workers nearby to complete 2 Forts unless he pre-built them (I'll assume he did). For now, his main navy is landlocked.
Baria has few forces, I can take it with my 5 loaded Transports.

Charts/Dems:



Battleship Warfare:

Mjmd alluded to Battleship warfare being about splitting up your navy due to Battleships' amazing collateral damage, so I wanted to try and dig deeper to understand it. Only attackers deal collateral damage, so it makes sense that any place you can safely set up battleships should deter any rival ships from coming within 6 tiles.

Collateral damage only affects 5 additional units, so limiting stack sizes to 3 - 4 can help minimize collateral damage, but then those become susceptible to being outtraded after the attacker wins a few 50/50s and then cleans up after the losses with the higher win% battles.

I'm assuming all Destroyers in this era will have Combat II and Battleships should go for Barrage II.
"DEST+2" is just a Destroyer with Combat II. "-1" or "-2" listed below means the unit was hit by one collateral damage strike via a standard Battleship (-1) or a Battleship with Barrage II (-2).
The attacker's winning chances for each matchup are listed below:


Battleships (Barrage II) that attack a naval stack have a 50% of immediately trading evenly by killing a rival Battleship AND set up to 5 other ships to have a -14% to -17% swing against Destroyers.
So with Combat II on all Destroyers and Barrage II on all Battleships:
Dealing -14% to -17% on 5 other units makes Battleships nearly trade evenly even if it dealt 0 damage to its main target (assuming rest of navy can clean up).

So maybe stacks of 3 - 4 is the right way to go, or just split your navy into major groups, staying away from their main Battleship force. So I'd avoid xist's coast if I'm moving up towards his other islands.
The problem is: what if NA closes borders and the game shoots my navy into xist's waters? Do we need to DoW NA at some point just in case? (Q2 below)

Questions:

(Q1): How many Airships do you usually make? Recon is obviously amazing. A couple stray hits can help take an island. But I was thinking they wouldn't be worth the hammers for big fights; most big armies have been fighting in big 1- or 2-turn engagements, then retreating. I'd rather have more Infantry or better. But for only 80h, Airships are pretty cheap...

(Q2): Do we reach a point where we just DoW coldrain so he can't close borders and mess up navy paths?

(Q3): What happens when there's an obvious stalemate to play second on a turn? I went after xist T244 and may want to DoW T245. If he waited to play until the turn is almost over, it'd be obvious that I want to DoW.

[Mjmd]

Q0) I will try writing up battleship tactics tonight.

Q1) That is pretty accurate. I would make 1-2 more.

Q2) That is a good question. Try sending him a fish for fish.

Q3) I think Lurkers roll? its been a while since we've had two people play clock games against each other to that extent. That being said be first. This late into the game almost all the advantages of being 2nd are gone. Getting to use your units first gives you a (slight) reinforcement advantage. IF the war reaches nukes being able to use nukes first is nice. The main advantage of being 2nd is if you get into air fighter battles over resources 2nd can reconnect, but that is minor and I don't see coming up much here.

[Mjmd]

So civ 4 is mostly about putting together big stacks for most of the game, but then modern era comes and battleships and nukes  say "NO".

So say you have a lovely fleet deployed around a key tactical point:



Between nukes and collateral:



Note how my fleet is deployed after. This is a somewhat confined space like you will be in. 4-6 units per tile is a little much for comfort, but I enjoyed a numbers advantage. In general numbers still matter a ton. With how grouped up I was he did counter attack and get slightly more than lost, but overall I came out ahead due to his initial clustering.

But ya you want more 2-3 units per tile see below. Below also shows why you don't hide fleets in forts once fighters / bombers are in play. That fleet was in a fort that I then bombed and it got pushed out. That fleet dies. Fleets in forts can also be vulnerable to enemy units fyi (as well as ships in neutral cities which may come up). I would recommend avoiding both.



The more space you have, the more you can spread out. In below since I don't want to expose any ships to collateral and there is more space / less numbers I just have a single battleship in front.



You will note the first row of ships doesn't show any available promotions, but pretty much all others do. Most of the time if your opponent is also playing smart you will not choose collateral and my front line ships here are all combat I. But keeping open promotions in case you want an extra bit of movement can be effective. EVERY port city should be on battleships fyi. While you do want destroyers available (partly because of their longer movement and partly for fighter cover), since you've built so many don't worry about it.  They are also good at finishing off battleships that you injured and can hit and retreat back easier.

While tanks with city raider 2 off of transports are about the same % as marines, I do recommend building some marines, they are slightly cheaper if nothing else and they do also defend once you've captured.

Its going to be a naval attrition game so full battleship production, its good you already got 3 ports, good luck.

[El Grillo]

Appreciate the writeup, Mjmd! Battleship warfare is such a different beast from anything that comes before it in Civ4, collateral + lots of movement is a volatile mix.

[RefSteel]

(Q3): What happens when there's an obvious stalemate to play second on a turn? I went after xist T244 and may want to DoW T245. If he waited to play until the turn is almost over, it'd be obvious that I want to DoW.

The player who played second last turn should play second on this turn too if considering making a declaration of war; otherwise, they would be double-moving into a war. Best practice if you were the second player in this circumstance and you think the first player might be holding the turn is probably to remind the other player of this situation, e.g. with a PM saying, "With peace about to expire, I think we should maintain a turn split at least until we know with more confidence when or whether hostilities are about to erupt again. Since I played after you last turn, I'll wait for you to play here." Of course, if e.g. you were playing first during the previous war and throughout most of the turns of the peace treaty and then waited to play the last turn second to create the desired split, you may be accused of playing clock games, and controversy may erupt. Fortunately, (though I haven't looked at PBSpy to see what's going on) I don't expect any of that will apply in this case.

Such a message (or a long wait without one) might indeed tip the player off that you plan to go to war, so you might not want to send it unless/until you get the impression that the other player is actually holding the turn, waiting for you to play. This is part of the reason that the idea that, "the attacker can choose their half of the turn split" should have no place in our rule set, since it flies directly in the face of the rules against double moves, clock games, or both - but that's just my opinion (and observation of the aforementioned controversies) as a lurker who hasn't played one of these games in years.

[Miro]

Of course, if e.g. you were playing first during the previous war and throughout most of the turns of the peace treaty and then waited to play the last turn second to create the desired split, you may be accused of playing clock games, and controversy may erupt.  Fortunately, (though I haven't looked at PBSpy to see what's going on) I don't expect any of that will apply in this case.

Nah, nothing like that, I played second during the final peace turn and wanted to DoW this turn, so I needed to be second when peace ended. Thankfully he played with plenty of time to spare, just my paranoia getting to me again!


Thanks for the battleship info, Mjmd! Seeing it like that helps a lot.

And jeez! All that battleship warfare on a Pangaea map. I couldn't imagine caring about navy that much on Pangaea. I get that Carriers help you push on land, threaten shores, and collateral destroys slow land armies anyways, but still.

Spreading ships out is counterintuitive, but I hear ya when it comes to Battleship collateral. On the plus side, navies look much cooler spread out like that. I'm guessing that if you have too many ships in a small space, you want your front line to be 2 - 3 ships and the backlines can be beefier, rather than 5 - 7 for all stacks. And escort stacks can be beefier, too.

I'll add some Marines and Airships.

I played that sea shanty to inspire my troops as they left China's shores for greater purpose - speaking of which...

[Miro]

T245 War:

OK, we went to war!

Summary:

• I razed xist's southern island Baria
  
• xist's sneaky force retreated to xist's waters once Gira opened borders with me
  

Xist upgraded his extra units at Baria to Infantry, making it 5 Infantry vs my 20 in Transports. I could have sent some Destroyers up to soften the defenses, losing them to his navy right after, but I remembered a brilliant quote by my favorite war tactician:

"You see, killbots have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them until they reached their limit and shut down." - Zapp Brannigan



I had to send all of my Transports and they'll be picked off easy next turn, but we razed another xist island!


Bound to lose another 1185 for free and need to rebuild some Transports or upgrade the Galleys I have.