[PB79] MirOh No, what am I doing?

[Mjmd]

That is quite the butchers bill.

I would say gold should be for tech unless you see other opportunities. I would almost think north has more now? Although you still have to protect your southern stuff. This is a pretty weird shape / combat.

FYI pretty sure your fleet NE of Salem is within range of Siga battleships if they take extra movement.

[Miro]

T247:

A dark day in China as we learn that the Commando promotion exists! Blood on Clock has become Bloodier on Clock.



Mining Co. HQ gone, Oxford gone, NE gone, GSpy gone. Lots of infrastructure. Possibly some ships, too, if they were in BoC at the time.

It hurts, but I want to play 100% war now and not tech so much. So this is not the greatest loss in the world, this is just a tribute.

[Mjmd]

AH SHOOT. I Should have warned you about that. I've experienced that enough and been paranoid enough in other games. I blame being sick for a week straight and then I was focused on battleships. Again, a situation a non green never would have thought of.

Defenses against commando units are obviously 1) Have multiple units in cities 2) You can't undo it, but don't railroad everything. 3) Place units along the few railroads you have. This also helps vs nuke commando razes later.

See if anyone else is willing to get off their butts. That definitely puts you really far behind. But Gira off the bench could be quite an ally and he even has quite a bit to gain.

[Miro]

AH SHOOT. I Should have warned you about that. I've experienced that enough and been paranoid enough in other games. I blame being sick for a week straight and then I was focused on battleships. Again, a situation a non green never would have thought of.

Defenses against commando units are obviously 1) Have multiple units in cities 2) You can't undo it, but don't railroad everything. 3) Place units along the few railroads you have. This also helps vs nuke commando razes later.

See if anyone else is willing to get off their butts. That definitely puts you really far behind. But Gira off the bench could be quite an ally and he even has quite a bit to gain.

And here I was laughing about xist not finishing railroads everywhere. Makes sense.
Commando is pretty shit in SP, but I remember someone mentioned that AGG / CHA leaders may settle GGs to pump out Commando units, but xist isn't either of those so I stopped thinking about it.

I loaded 5 more Transports and I'm headed into NA waters to stay out of xist's Battleship range and target his Moai island. Plan to unload T251 next to city and ram 4 Cannons into the city T252.

Asked Gira, former bestie, if he wants to go to war. This turn, coldrain will settle the southern island where we razed xist's last city of our last war. He returned Fish for Fish T246.

[greenline]

What are your options for striking back in the near term?

[Miro]

T255 Update:

Short strike summary about 4 sneak Tanks over T248 - T251 before we get to all of the south sea shenanigans:

I noticed an underdefended city of xist's on his western border with Gira, so I used a Transport to load 4 Tanks and unload them in Gira's city. They'd be able to hit is city from 6 tiles away.
My 4 Sneaky Tanks were spotted in Gira's lands because xist posted an Airship into one of Gira's cities (I didn't know Airships could post up in other people's cities!)
I killed his Airship and still set up in range of xist's city. He rushed my Tanks first with a few units and killed 1 Tank while losing 1 - 2 Cannons, a Tank, and 2 - 3 Infantry when I hit them back the next turn.
He reinforced his city. I retreated, but I'll take the small win.




T248:
I asked Gira to join war, never heard back. I loaded up 5 Transports, sending them to Salem island.

My strike plan with the Transports was to stay out of range from xist's Battleships. With 2 moves, I could threaten his Moai island with no way for xist to stop me from landing:


All of xist's Battleships are posted up in Siga, where I marked "Navy" on map.

T249:
I finished Biology and Xist landed on Salem island. He didn't have enough to break Salem and I could have fought his invasion force, but my Transports needed to move to (2) in above to set up for the Moai invasion.



And I was right! His forces on the island weren't enough to take on Salem's defenses.
But I didn't consider his Transports in Motya.

T250:

Xist built a road, ran 4 Cannons into Salem, then brought Transports to help him crush the island. He kept Salem, didn't raze. I get it, but I was surprised - I'm on auto-raze mode.

Here's what he left in Salem:


What's worse, xist's navy moved towards Thapsus (his Moai island):


I felt so stupid. SO STUPID. When I teach kids chess, one of the lessons is that your idea for a move should never start with, "IF my opponent doesn't do <x>, then this will be so good!"
It's a childish gimmick. And here, I moved my entire navy and 5 loaded Transports away from my island in hopes that xist and his arsenal of Airships wouldn't think about why my entire fleet is moving west.
Repositioning his navy is an obvious move. Damn.

But I still had 5 loaded Transports vs his leftover forces at Salem and could clear some Destroyers while I'm at it! 1 Transport had Cannons, but I had another loaded Transport coming from the east, so it's still 20 Tanks/Infantry ready to fight.

I spent a long time setting up a simulation of the fight in WB and won 17 / 20 times. Unfortunately, when I attacked, it played out like the 3 / 20 losses.

Outside of Battleship range, I set up a big boat bubble around Salem:


This turn got to me. First, I felt childish when my gimmick was put in check, then I saw some hope and logged out to test simulations, then I logged in and failed, logged out again from deflation. Eventually got back to round out the turn.

T251:

Xist cleared some of my navy and reinforced his island. I asked Gira and coldrain to go to war with xist.

Gira's reply:


I bring back my Transports, sending them to the southern ice because they couldn't reach far enough to get to shore and I didn't think to build a Fort in my tundra. The big boat bubble worked so well last turn that I gave it another try to save those Transports as well as my freshly loaded Transports so I could attempt to hit Salem again next turn.



A-B-C here is Battleship #, Destroyer #, Transport #. The one Transport near Salem is empty.
To you experienced players, this may look moronic. But poor Miro thought he understood the Battleship lesson and had no idea that his Sunday was about to get ruined!

T252:



Ouch. Ouchhhhhh. Bro! I guess these 3-unit stacks are just to mitigate losses and take positions, they can't come close to trading efficiently even when you have coast bonus.

Xist killed the 1 empty Transport, but my loaded ones in the south are still in position to invade Salem!

And then as I went back and forth between my notes and the game client, I accidentally clicked a Transport to go straight north, up next to Rome. *sigh*
That made the difference, I couldn't hit Salem now 
In my notes, I wrote about how tired I am and how much it sucks that for the past several months, Gira and coldrain were fine closing borders with me, coldrain even DoW'd me with xist, but neither of them will close borders or do anything to stand up to xist. I mainly just wish it wasn't a 4-player game after taking out Rickety. I like interaction with other players and it sucks having them all go dark.

xist has 406 war weariness and coldrain built the Statue of Liberty.

T253:

Xist heard my woes about having no interaction with other players and sent me a peace offer. I ripped it up.



Quite on the warfront. I lost that one Transport (after emptying) by Rome, but it took out a Destroyer first! Little victories.

T254:

I loaded up to invade Salem again, this time without the big boat bubble. xist finished his NE.

T255:

xist finished Forbidden Palace and Hermitage.

I unloaded on Salem island and xist has retreated some units a bit ago, so we'll see how next turn goes.

I also haven't teched at all in this time, Flight is about 5T away. Gira finished Flight and Biology. Coldrain will have Flight in 2T. xist will have Flight in 3T.

[greenline]

I think I recall that in an industrial start PB game (Pb32 was it?), small ship groupings ended up being very vulnerable to airship strikes softening them up for other ships to attack. But it's definitely a difficult lesson to put in practice considering how few competitive MP games go that late in the tech tree.

[Mjmd]

T251 & T252

Probably my bad. Something I failed to mention is that you have to be able to hit back to make trades good. I'm assuming he hit you and then retreated into his cities with his damaged ships? If it had been more in the open and you could chase him down even with destroyers vs damaged ships you would have come out ahead. This was never a problem in my experiences. In my close quarter game we were in stalemate until nukes which makes retreating into cities a bad idea. And in the none close quarters game opponent could never retreat into cities.

Airships make any kind of sneak attack VERY hard. And yes they can be in other players cities. They are vulnerable there however. Same with ships btw. My 2nd game I lost a ship in a neutral port as I was unaware of this.

Your teching is going to be REALLY bad without your corp HQ. Its pretty key you aren't late to nukes. Its fine if he is a little ahead as project takes a bit, but don't fall behind more than 1 tech. Getting Salem back seems important, but after some wealth builds may be needed.

[Miro]

T260 - Midturn Question

We've had a very quiet time these past few turns. No losses after I took back Salem on T256:


Now, I agreed to stop making so many Battleships like you asked.

But I said build wealth-

SO that freed up space to build Tanks! We got Tanks on Tanks on Tanks. Right as Fighters and Bombers are hitting the scene.
I put more effort into my soldier-counting sheet than I did back in the China-Carthage-Native America war of T196 and now I'm back on my bullshit. I'm about to invade Oea again.

So my question is simply: Would Fighters/Bombers make this attack a major blunder, or am I right that this will 100% destroy Oea?

We start with this:


Xist has 7,259,000 soldiers.

Per The Inner Workings of the Demographics Screen:

• ~130,000 lies in population
  
• 170,000 lies in techs
  
• ~239,000 lies in Infrastructure
  

Then I send out my Airships to scan what they can.
I see all but 13 cities in the back. Would be nice if I had a spy wandering around the middle and I expected xist to make moves to his western border if his spies spotted my army or if he was worried about my ~12 Transports moving around, but he didn't budge his armies on his eastern border and I put my army on that tile that's out of range from his Airship Recons.

Quick side note: I had my ~12 Transports loaded and ready to blitz his southern coast island instead of capturing Salem, wiping his navy if he didn't reinforce his 20 units there just in time on T256. Seeing my Transports move back into position might have him on edge about his China border rather than the NA border.



He has 13 cities that I can't see. I estimate about 15,000 soldiers defending each one (1 Longbow + 1 Musket on average). Maybe more on islands/coasts.
That'd be 195,000 soldiers out of vision as city defenses.

Now, the real forces. I have vision of:


This should be 5,889,000 soldiers.

Recap:
Dem Screen: 7,259,000 soldiers
Military Vision: 5,889,000 soldiers
Population: ~130,000 soldiers
Tech: 170,000 soldiers
Infrastructure: ~239,000 soldiers
Out-of-vision City Defenses: ~195,000 soldiers

This leaves 1,175,000 unseen soldiers.

If they're all Tanks, that's 39 Tanks.
If they're all Infantry, that's 59 Infantry.
More likely it's a mix of Cannons and Infantry.
(Worst case: 20 - 25 Cannons with 40 - 50 Infantry)

Some are probably fresh Battleships/Transports (he lost 6 Transports when I took Salem, he's been rebuilding them) or planes, so we can probably cut those numbers by 20% - 40%.

Now let's look at the map.
Chi-Car Border:


xist's forces here are 17 - 20 tiles away from Oea. His main armies in Lixus and Motya are 19 and 20 tiles away respectively, so an escape back into NA and back home would be entirely safe from them. (though if NA cancels borders, we cry, but he returned Fish for Fish at start of war)

Car-NA Border:


xist has 2 Knights in Oea and 1 Infantry in Okran's Gulf. Otherwise, the 1,175,000 soldiers + Sarim Batim's army are all that he possibly has at that border.

"But Miro, that's still a lot he could have there! Why would you ever invade against that!"



That's 98 units:

• 33 Tanks
  
• 2 Marines
  
• 44 Infantry
  
• 11 Cannons
  
• 8 Machine Guns
  

Have some Machine Guns to cover after Cannons ram us (and some air interception?), also have a few other units in Smash Up to join, so it'll be a 100-unit army.

Do we hit?

[Mjmd]

You probably hit on one front instead of splitting up. Its too bad Lixus is over a river. That being said your tanks get to take city raider 2 and you can reduce the defenses via fighters. In general he can hit two of your cities there after softening up. I expect movement on that front at bombers if nothing else.

BTW air battles are a little easier. Just have more for the area attacking. And you almost never want to intercept. The reason being is the attacker can overwhelm the point defense of the fighters pretty easy. IE if you have 3 fighters on intercept in 3 cities across the front and your opponent has 6 fighters, they can order the 6 to bomb a tile only 3 of your 9 can reach. Fighters keep trying to intercept even when damaged (although they aren't 100% to intercept), but point being even if they win they will almost always lose the 2nd fight. Attacking fighters live and promote making future battles easier. This is part of why carriers are pretty good. Other is added mobility. And you don't feel compelled to fort over tiles although you may have to do that too.

Did you retake that southern naval city?