Speaker's super top secret thread for the purposes of world domination; Neener Neener

[Sullla]

So about that stuff that's going on:



Speaker felt confident enough to move in against Lewwyn/India this turn. I've assembled the relevant units that we can see in the above picture. Speaker also has another half-dozen or so cavalry coming in a turn later, as they finish healing from the last battle against Thoth. We figure it will take one turn to bombard down defenses, then attack. City Raider 3 cannons should all win their battles and inflict huge collateral damage, then the rest of the units clean up from there.

Now maybe there's a huge stack of reserve units somewhere in Lewwyn's territory. It's very hard for us to say for sure. We've never had graphs visibility with Teams 2 or 4 at any point in this game. (Since every other team ran max EP against us from the very start, heh.) I'm sure that Team 2 and Team 4 have had research visibility and even city visibility against us for most of the game. We're advancing somewhat blind here. Still, it's infantry/cavs/cannons against maces, pikes, and drafted muskets. All of Speaker's units are double-promoted, many of them triple-promoted. Unless there's some giant stack lurking in the fog, we should be pretty safe to start gaining some land.

Over in the west, Dave made another interesting play with his ships:



Rather than retreat them, he pushed deeper into my territory. You can see the stack of four ships that have advanced forward and are blockading more tiles. I'm not quite sure what the logic is here. True, it causes some irritation for this particular turn... but all of those ships are now dead on the next turn.

With Combustion and oil in hand, we upgraded three ironclads to destroyers. (220g per upgrade, expensive!) They are sitting down at the bottom of the screen. From this point, there is literally no place where Dave's ships can go where they won't be killed by the destroyers next turn. I also finished a destroyer in Crescendo, so there are 4 destroyers in play for next turn. Unfortunately I made a minor error on the previous turn; I didn't expect Dave to move further north, so I build an ironclad out of Crescendo. If I had built a frigate, I could have moved the ship to my fish resource and then upgraded it. My ironclad didn't have the movement points to do so. So to prevent the fish from being pillaged, my ironclad moved there and is sitting on the resource. Dave's units will have very poor odds to attack it: my ironclad is Combat I + defensive bonus, while his is promoted with extra movement. His Combat II frigate is injured, his other double-promoted frigate is Sentry, and the last one has only Combat I. He could probably kill the ironclad and pillage that fish, but only by losing most of his ships, which would then free up my destroyers to hit other targets. We'll see what he does.

My science has been sitting here stagnant at around 1450 beaker/turn for some time, due to losing all these coastal tiles and trade routes to the island cities. Hopefully that will change now, as Dave has thrown away much of his naval edge over these last few turns. I have a very realistic chance of outbuilding him at sea in the destroyer race. I also didn't see any upgrades as yet from their team to destroyers, but I do expect them; there's a pair of Combat III frigates near Map Control which are likely targets. Still, we're moving from a situation where Dave had total naval control (15 frigates and 3 ironclads to my 8 naval units) into a situation where we're more or less even. That's a major win for our team.

My cities are mostly done their factories and power plants. Now they need to build aqueducts (+2 health), harbors (+2 health), grocers (+4 health), and public transportation (+2 health) to overcome the effects of industrial pollution. A couple of them were losing -7 food just due to pollution. Fun stuff. Glad I'm Expansive here! If I can keep control of the clams resource at Help Pix, that would go a long way toward easing the health crisis. I'm also planting addition cities in the south to grab silver and deer resources. I already have deer, but Speaker and surise can use them.

Team 3 also did get Combustion tech as expected. Where will they go now? They can race us to Physics tech if they want, and can probably beat us there, since we used some of Speaker's research income to finance these upgrades. But if they go to Physics, then they delay factories that much longer. At some point, they still need to get Economics, Corporation, and Assembly Line. The longer they delay, the better it is for us. Speaker and I have the most production in the game despite Speaker's smaller size, just because of our factories and power plants. We need to make this offensive succeed against Lewwyn to get Speaker some more land, and win back control of the seas in the west to increase my research power. Both fronts are pretty interesting right now.

We're really curious what Lewwyn's reaction was to Speaker moving in this turn. You readers are lucky in that regard, we won't be able to find out until much later.

[Kylearan]

We've never had graphs visibility with Teams 2 or 4 at any point in this game. (Since every other team ran max EP against us from the very start, heh.)

Ouch.

[Speaker]

I believe I have another 8 Cavalry, 2 Curassier, and 1 Infantry and 1 Knight to move in this turn, after healing. Also, Sullla didn't show it, but I finished my Coal Plant in Postnerf Shen, and am now finishing up Pentagon, which will be finished in 6 turns. Someone else got a Great Engineer a couple turns ago, but we're not sure if it was T2 or T3. An Engineer can't finish Pentagon in one turn anyways, and as Sullla noted, T3 is still three techs away from Assembly Line, so we should be pretty safe to get it.

Ouch.

Yeah, this has been a huge pain for us. I know there are two other people with high power aside from T3, but I have no idea who they are. I am assuming T2-China is one of them (sharing a contentious border with Shoot the Moon), but I have no idea who the other is.

[Sullla]

Dave made another mistake with his ships this turn, and we should be able to clean up on our end. I can't wait until we're up to play again tomorrow.

[Sullla]

OK, finally played the turn last night after the delay for Speaker. Didn't have time to write up something last night, so this morning it is. Here's what's going on.



We've moved Speaker's main stack up next to the Lewwyn city of Vijayanagar. It's on the grassland hill tile directly south of the city. There's another, smaller reinforcement stack moving up from the southeast. Amusingly, Speaker was able to railroad that tile with his worker despite it being inside Lewwyn's borders. Well there's something you don't see every day! We didn't move to the jungle hill southeast of the city because there were two Woodsman maces sitting there, and it just didn't seem worth it to dislodge them. They can move back into the city to defend, or they can sit there uselessly out of the battle. Attacking when they have +100% defensive bonus didn't feel attractive.

Sentry unit revealed a big stack of 17 catapults behind the city. This is pretty much what we were expecting; Speaker thought they might have 30+ cats back there. Lewwyn will likely hit us with all those cats and then try to attack. We shouldn't be in too much danger though; collateral or no, it would still be maces and muskets against defending infantry on hill terrain. Also, nearly every one of Speaker's units is double promoted, many of them triple promoted. A Combat II infantry on hill terrain would be strength 29 against mostly unpromoted drafted maces/muskets. That's not very scary. (Yes, I know how the promotions affect combat strength. It's an estimate, no need to bring that up again.)



If we do take the city, we probably have to raze and replace it. I drew in the cultural borders with Thoth if the city would go down, and that city is just too close to The Alamo for comfort. While we could go and attack Thoth as well, that would be a costly endeavor given all his drafted rifles. Better to leave Team 4 alone for now and concentrate on defeating Team 2, since they are so militarily backwards, and also have that slight threat of winning by culture. We could plant a new city on the jungle hill tile southeast of Lewwyn's current city, and that wouldn't be too bad of a spot. I think that's what we'll do if we take the city.

It's obvious by now that Team 2 is going for a Cultural victory. Their tech hasn't moved at all in many turns, their borders have been pushing against Speaker (indicating high culture slider), and they have a city with 12k culture over in China. I'm keeping an eye on their progress with the F8 Victory Screen, and fortunately their team isn't advancing that fast. Yes, there's one city with 12k culture, making about 500/turn, but the other two cities are very far behind, at only 3k and 2k each. Remember, they can't gift cities around for cultural purposes, and all three have to come from the same civ, not the whole team. I'm sure that Team 2 is sitting on some Great Artists for culture bombs, but they're still going to need to get a lot closer than they are currently to pose a real threat.

In any case, we have to start taking cities now, to gain more land for use against Team 3. If this goes the way we planned, Speaker should be able to carve through Lewwyn/India without too much opposition. We've got factory production everywhere now, and Speaker can build 3-4 infantry per turn, all of which will be triple-promoted once Pentagon finishes in 5t. Team 2 still can't produce a better unit than the musket. This should be pretty academic if we play it correctly.

What's the rule of warfare in Civ4? Short, decisive conflicts. No long, drawn out slugfests. This is how we planned things: tech to a military advantage, then go for the kill. Time to see how it plays out in practice.

[Sullla]

I decided I'd put the stuff in the west in a separate post, because of the size of spoiler images. We have very good news to report for our team over there as well:

Here was the situation at the end of Team 3's turn. I've got my units highlighted with the black text, Dave's units indicated in red. Last turn we upgraded three ironclads to destroyers and built another one out of Crescendo, giving me four of the new industrial ships. I put my one remaining ironclad on a fish tile near Crescendo, to prevent Dave from pillaging it. We were wondering what he would do with his ships.

Dave kind of made a mistake here. There was no way that his ships could escape, because of the huge range of destroyers. Perhaps he didn't see my new ships? His frigate in the south should have spotted them, but maybe he didn't see them until after moving other ships. In any case, Dave apparently went for more coastal blockading, which was pointless because of the way that the turn order works. Each team's research/production cycle takes place when they hit end turn. Blockading on Dave's turn meant nothing if I could clear out the ships on my turn, since they would be gone and the blockade lifted when I entered turn. And those ships were all sitting ducks in their current positions...

It's a little hard to tell from the image, but every single water tile of mine in the western ocean is being blockaded by one of Dave's ships. My goal for the turn was to kill the 5 ships in the southern sea and lift the blockade. This actually worked out perfectly, since the one ironclad could hit Dave's little stack near Crescendo.

Let's check those odds:



Have I mentioned that destroyers are a little too strong? They should probably be strength 20, because that way frigates and ironclads would stand some kind of chance against them. Oh well. Make use of what's there.

Speaker pokes fun at me for leaving the combat animations on, but sometimes there's a real pleasure in watching them:



Ha, take that! Blockade me, will you? We'll show those scruffy sea dogs who's boss, yar!

More seriously, one destroyer killed the isolated frigate in the south. Another one killed the ironclads off by itself in the west. Two destroyers took out the top two ships in Dave's little ministack, and the ironclad took out the remaining damaged frigate. Then I upgraded that ironclad to a destroyer after it attacked. Net result? Five destroyers in the ocean, all five of them gaining a second promotion from winning a combat round this turn. The coastal blockade of my territory is dead.

Again, I can't get over what a big change this was. Just a few turns ago, Dave was denying me the whole coast, and my cities were on the verge of starvation. If he could set up shop there, and cripple my coastal cities, they'd never be able to build the naval units needed to fight back. This was a very near-run thing, folks. Just a few more turns to reach Combustion and I would probably have lost the naval war permanently. Dave hugely outnumbered me as recently as 3 turns ago. His decision to attack my ministack of 2 ironclads and 2 frigates was a major misplay, and a potential turning point. In the last few turns, we exchanged ships in this fashion:

India
2 ironclads and 2 frigates

France
2 ironclads and 10 frigates

And earlier, Dave sacrificed 4 of his frigates to kill 2 of my own. He's traded very poorly in engagement after engagement over here. Giving all of my destroyers a second promotion to boot, which lets them fight on even terms with Dave's Theocracy units, that was another mistake in judgment. Dave would have been much better off just deleting all of his ships last turn.

Here's where we stand now:

I built another destroyer out of Crescendo at end of turn, giving me a sixth modern ship, although that one only has the single promotion. Dave has completely lost his blockade in the southern sea now, and my cities are very happily working those coastal tiles again. My research, which was stalled out for many turns around 1450 beakers from that blockade, has now risen over 1500/turn and is on the rise. Work boats are reconnecting seafood resources and putting my island cities on the grow path again.

I'm hoping that Dave does not pull his blockade in the north just yet. My plan is to build a fort on the tile indicated, and sail those destroyers into the northern sea to kill the remainder of Dave's fleet. If he doesn't retreat into his cities, those ships up there are all dead. The only down side to this turn was a silly micro mistake by me: I moved out a galleon to check inside Dave's city of Vigo Bay, then forgot to move it back into my island city. Ooops! That ship is dead on Dave's turn. Not a huge loss, but I do need to move something else in there to scout that location each turn. Silly mistake on my part.

Much to my surprise, Dave did NOT upgrade his triple-promoted frigates to destroyers so far. (They appear to have upgraded in the small sea near WarriorKnight, where a destroyer appeared this turn. Uh ok - that area isn't nearly as important.) I still expect that he will upgrade those frigates. If he doesn't, I will blockade the living daylights out of his Heroic Epic city as soon as my destroyers can assemble a stack to the west. This is a dangerous time for Team 3; if they don't assemble a counterforce of destroyers quickly, I'll deny them those sea tiles permanently, and then those coastal cities will lack the food to build a competing navy. Very interesting to see what they will do here.

Most of my cities now have a factory and coal plant. After building the coal plant, they had so much pollution that they needed to add more health buildings, which is where I currently stand with most of them. Look at Dazzle, which is losing 7 food/turn to pollution. Heh. This is one time when it's nice to be Expansive: double-speed harbors can go up in 1t everywhere, and harbors are worth +2 health. That will be +3 health when I connect my clams, finally, next turn. (They even increase commerce slightly from trade routes with the island cities.) A grocer also adds +4 health from resources, so harbor and grocer together take care of most health needs. So I am finally just about ready to crank military, having built factories, plants, and health stuff over the past dozen turns. I'd like a dozen or so infantry first just to shore up my defenses in the event of a possible attack. I'm also expanding to my last two cities spots in the deep south, to grab silver and a few more deer resources. I'll show some cities in upcoming turns, once they are done with their health buildings and no longer look like industrial cesspools!

We need a little bit more than 2t to get Physics. If I hadn't been blockaded we could probably get it next turn, but no changing the past. I expect that Team 3 is going for Physics themselves, and will likely get it next turn, one turn before we do. Irritating for us but that's life. Every turn that they don't spend going for Assembly Line remains a win for us. Please do continue to ignore +75% production in every city, thanks. We'll have enough overflow from Physics to do Electricity in 3t, and then we'll see from there. Industrialism is super expensive, probably 5t of research needed on that one. Hopefully I'll have the industrial base to go mass tanks once we reach that point.

Fun and interesting times ahead.

[Sullla]

Well that answers that question:



Lewwyn retreated all units, probaby into LOLOLOLOL. Good decision by him, they were all going to die to no purpose on the next turn. Now they might be able to do something useful later. On the other hand, it's the return of the athlete4life defense from Pitboss #2. You guys know how that turned out, right?

Thoth can actually raze or capture the city with his Guerilla II rifle on his turn. We'll see how he chooses to play this. If he would take the city and move in a bunch of units... well, city with no cultural defenses sitting next to seven CR3 cannons would like to have a few words with Thoth.

Better queue up an Imperialistic settler for a replacement city on our next turn.

[Speaker]

Bah, I do the heavy lifting, and Thoth gets the capture gold? If he's smart, he'll just raze the city with his Guerrilla 2 Rifle.

[Speaker]

I just realized that Thoth can't actually see that the city is empty. He does not have line of sight vision on the city center due to the jungles.

And he just ended turn without attacking the city. So nevermind.

[fluffyflyingpig]

I always confuse Vijayanagar and The Alamo. They are so close together in this game. I appreciate that team 2 resolves the confusion for all of us.