[SPOILERS] Woden and ljubljana like boats

[ljubljana]

Do you think CMF has any cities better for TRs than Cuneiform? Or are your eastern cities not in range? I could also send a nice TR from Oracle Bones potentially if CMF does have good cities. I'd say go for it - it's not like we have any incentive whatsoever to attack CMF anytime soon. If we do survive TAD, this also gives us an excuse to build trading posts in a bunch of CMF cities in case we do someday need a war with them.

[Woden]

I am a little weary of sending trade routes to Cuneiform from my western cities, as TAD might be able to pillage them. I am not sure how good they will be and I did redirect an archer towards CMF to see if I can defog his cities better. I can probably get one more route to Cuneiform from Heimdall but am unsure if Freya is too far or if the route will go west instead of east.

I think I can send a trade route to Borodino (Russian) and it has a harbor and campus and is size 11, so probably another district or 2. With the alliance, it might come close to Cuneiform's 22 gold.

You might want to think about an alliance with China. It would boost your routes a bit.

[ljubljana]

CMF actually sent me an economic alliance offer this turn . I reject it so you can offer one next turn, since if I accept you won't be able to get one as well.

Holding the turn for a bit to discuss the following question: should I offer China an extension of the DoF this turn? That will rule out going after them, of course, but we'll be pre-emptively attacking TAD next turn unless something major changes, and I'd rather have China decide on a DoF this turn, when they might in theory consider us a threat, than next turn, when they'll already know we're going after TAD. This is especially true because China is actually up to almost 1000 gold and could pose a real military threat if they come for us while our whole navy is off fighting TAD - they will need this gold and the resulting navy to fend off CMF, but that doesn't mean that I am 100% confident that they will actually choose to do so. If we do get a DoF extension, I'll propose an economic alliance ASAP.

There is exactly one reason why I can imagine you not wanting to extend the DoF with China, and that is this:



What? Where are these extremely valuable, promoted but un-upgraded ships going, toward you? Toward Geneva? If they are coming after us, I see absolutely zero reason not to either hold them back as meat shields/for upgrades or to start advancing them toward Akkad. I will keep an eye on them, but if they keep moving around aimlessly next turn I will forever wonder whether they might not have been coming for us after all as I start shelling down Akkad.

Speaking of which, I'm feeling a little more confident about that than I was last turn - with 6 frigate and two caravel attacks per turn (one from the armada), it shouldn't take more than 2-3 turns to take the city back. They started walls on t120 and don't appear to be running a trade route, so if they are working the 5-hammer configuration it will take them until t128 to finish even in Limes, which should be too slow. If they are in Urban Planning also and have +3 amenities (unlikely) and are working the plains farm instead of the 5-gold plantation tile, they could just baaarely surprise us with walls on their t126, but I think that's pretty unlikely.

Oh, and congratulations on PBEM18! You played a really great game there, and have been a joy to lurk .

edit: Moved my warrior one more tile to find another TAD ship even further along in whatever weird galleys-only flanking maneuver they're trying to do here:



What is going on here? I don't understand why they would commit that many ships to scouting and not even bother fanning them out, but if they are trying to sneak ships towards Geneva or something and attack with them they are going to be sorely disappointed.

edit2: Look at the next tech I unlocked after Buttress - Printing! That's some good news for us - since TAD has to be researching Cartography now, we will have at least a few turns down the line with a +3 CS advantage from the diplo visibility before TAD catches up, maybe longer if they don't know where it is yet and end up wasting time on other things first. We know they don't already have the tech since they didn't hit the Renaissance era until they got Square Rigging. TAD will eventually catch up with us in the late-t130s, but by that point we will be only a few turns away from the Renaissance and Twilight Valor. TAD will probably go for that as well, of course, but it will at least put some constraints on their policy slots if they want to run it and Oligarchic Legacy at the same time (with Conscription, Professional Army, and Press Gangs all being pretty much inviolate at that point).

edit3: Remind me where Reformed Church is, by the way? Wars of Religion could make a nice target for us after Exploration as a replacement for OL. Also, I am not sure how many of my cities need to be converted to your religion to get the boost from that - is it just more than half? If it is, I'm probably not too far away from there, so hopefully we can get lucky and pick up a boost from that at some point as well.

[Woden]

I say send China a DoF and then an economic alliance.

TAD is probably using his galleys to pull your frigates south because they look to be easy targets. He even has a few frigates down there to make it look good and he is sailing away from his cities. This means his larger, upgraded forces will probably attack north and he is probably hoping to rush your northern cities or he wants to try and surround your fleet if you head south. Regardless, any "weird" moves are to draw your attention away from the real targets or to get your navy into a bad position. Or at least that is what I would do.

Reformed Church is after Diplomatic Service which is behind Guilds (I think). You need 50% +1 of your cities following a religion to be following a religion.

[ljubljana]

Turn 125 - Phoenicia

Well, I found at least some of the real targets...



TAD should have roughly 8-10 frigates in total right now based on their gold expenditure, so I think that's a significant enough force to rule out the main thrust of the attack being in south alone. Best guess is either that the fleet in the south is totally diversionary and they're planning to swing north for a decapitation strike on me or that there are significant numbers of frigates in both locations and they're going to hit both of us at the same time. I do think there is one strange thing about the former possibility, which is that I think most of TAD's ports are in the south, and since they built what I suspect was most of their quads while they were waiting for Square Rigging, I am not sure how they could have amassed 8 frigates up north without sailing some up the east coast. But it's certainly possible, and we should be on guard for either possibility.

Anyways, I offer China the DoF, and will offer an economic alliance next turn if they accept. All my ships are in range of Writing on the Wall for next turn - my tentative plan is to try to capture it, since it could buy us time by drawing fire away from my real cities, and retaking it might cause TAD to expose some of their navy to a counterattack. I have 6 frigates and 6 caravels, all embolon, one of them now an armada. The priority now for me is to upgrade the rest of the promoted biremes (I only got as many frigates as I did to get more shots per turn at WotW) and start to build up a second wave of reinforcements.



There is one problem for TAD if they're going for a decapitation strike up north, in that I don't really have that much up there to decapitate. They can neither raze nor hold Cuneiform, and Linear B and Runic are crappy enough that it wouldn't actually be so bad if they spend a ton of time trying to take them and allow us to build up reinforcements. If they do that, I think the plan is to let them work on a city or two while I build caravels and wait for my chance to get in a first strike. If they're trying to hit us both at once or surround my navy, on the other hand, the plan is to pick one of the two fleets and throw everything I have at it, ideally with a first strike, in the hopes of alleviating our numerical disadvantage.

As you can see, I will finish walls everywhere in the next two turns and then start ships. A few cities have a choice on what to build, though - Abjad and Nsibidi could either finish their Cothons (6-8t), then build ships, or skip the Cothons, and Runic and Mitla could build lighthouses for TRs since they are too weak to build ships efficiently (7 hammers in Runic is a 14-turn caravel, Mitla is even worse). My instincts are to ignore all that and just start caravels in literally every coastal city (well, except for whichever one city I use for frigates, probably Cuneiform), but do you think I should do Cothons or lighthouses anywhere instead?

edit: GAs always spawn at the capital, right? That admiral you can see in the first screenie is Frank Drake, so if that's correct, we can deduce that TAD's capital, and therefore the Yi ironclad (turtle ship?), is in the north as well.

[Woden]

TAD should have roughly 8-10 frigates in total right now, so I think that's a significant enough force to rule out the main thrust of the attack being in south alone. Best guess is either that the fleet in the south is totally diversionary and they're planning to swing north for a decapitation strike on me or that there are significant numbers of frigates in both locations and they're going to hit both of us at the same time. I do think there is one strange thing about the former possibility, which is that I think most of TAD's ports are in the south, and since they built what I suspect was most of their quads while they were waiting for Square Rigging, I am not sure how they could have amassed 8 frigates up north without sailing some up the east coast. But it's certainly possible, and we should be on guard for either possibility.

The niter tile that I have the target pin on (at Official Visit) looks to be on the coast, which means there might be a huge bay with 2 to 4 cities pumping out boats. And with the boat numbers you can see, it is most likely. Meaning TAD might have better boat production in the north, not the south.

[ljubljana]

Yeah, that would make sense. That would also explain the weird unupgraded quad I spotted at Official Visit a few turns ago (eg, TAD didn't bother to upgrade it because it's not part of the main attack force). If that's the case and almost all TAD's modern ships are in the north, I am glad to see that they are spending some cash upgrading boats in the south as well that aren't really going to do much against us. Upgrading boats there does help defend their cities from our navy, but really, it's not like we can afford to go for any TAD cities besides WotW anyways unless we can decisively defeat their fleet.

I think the fact that the production capabilities of their cities are divided between north and south like this is a point in favor of keeping WotW should we manage to capture it. If they only have 2-3 cities capable of the reinforcing a northern attack force and the rest are stuck in the south, we should be able to vastly rather than just slightly outproduce them in that theater. They could fix this by retaking WotW, but again, that buys us time and potentially lets us get in a first strike. Too bad I didn't keep the city and build walls there or all that would be even more true...

[ljubljana]

Pre-flight check:



This is really bad. TAD turned the Yi ironclad into a fleet by retiring one of their old GAs, which I should have known they would do. I can't see if they have an alliance yet, and they also don't have Oligarchic Legacy yet for some reason - I guess they either don't think they will need it or don't think it's worth it until their caravels are online. But these are the best odds I can get against it - getting two-shot with my caravel armada. My frigates do almost no damage (literally like 5 damage per attack from what I can see), and it will probably promote fast enough to out-heal any damage I can do to it for a good long time while effortlessly one-shotting one ship per turn for free in the meantime.

I can probably take Writing on the Wall in the next two turns, which still has no walls up, and from which TAD has retreated their galley rather than trying to defend it in apparent recognition of the hopelessness of mounting a defense there. But I think this one move, the fact that the Yi ironclad is now a fleet, means the war as a whole is now hopeless for us. The only way to kill it is to equalize the strength differential somehow, which would require something like, eg, TAD letting us surround it with ships and forgetting to ally with Kaiser and ignoring Oligarchic Legacy while we get the diplo visibility up from the IA. That means TAD has to blunder badly with their tactics in order to to lose this war, and TAD is not going to do that.

Is there something desperate we could consider here that would give us half a chance? I guess I could ignore Writing on the Wall instead of taking it and just rush all my ships north at the ironclad, trying to surround and kill it before TAD gets to Cartography. But the timing doesn't work out on that - it would take 2-3 turns to reposition ships to make that possible, in which time TAD will get Cartography. If I had moved all my ships up there in advance and could attack this turn, maybe I could make it work, but I didn't do that because killing Writing on the Wall seemed like the better play, and probably would have been if TAD didn't both have an ironclad fleet and leave it exposed like this.

Maybe there are other desperate plans we could consider, desperate diplomatic plans? I could try offering them multiple cities for an economic alliance - I doubt they'd accept that (why would they?), but I guess if they did we could turn on China and have some tiny chance to win that way. I guess I could also just kind of hope they don't go after us, but like you said that's a total pipe dream. Unfortunately, winning this war may also be a pipe dream, and could actually be the more unlikely of the two pipe dreams at this point...

Worse, roland has rejected my friendship offer too. I guess that's a good thing since we might not be able to win anymore except by going after China in the next 30t. But it does mean they can swoop in and burn a bunch of my cities while I'm preoccupied with TAD if they feel like it, and I'm not really in a position to do anything about it.

[Woden]

That ironclad is not exposed. He wants you to try and take it out and you will find your fleet surrounded and/or eliminated. It is what it is. We just have to make this as hard as we can. The best option will be if he takes your capital with it and you have the forces to recapture the city while it is in it. I think I will bring up a few berserkers towards your capital once they are upgraded in a couple of turns and hope they can make it before he can get there. When does the spy get established? That is another You might be able to take it out if you hit it with your armada caravel first and then your frigates will do more damage. Tough call, Is it better to attack the ironclad or attack his fleet and do more damage there. The ironclad only has 1 attack per turn, so might be better to focus on his other ships.

[Woden]

Another strategy would be to surround it with cheap ships and slow it down by making him kill one to move a tile. Use the 1-unit per tile against him. That will also only so long but maybe it will give you some time on his other ships.

Or suicide some Caravels and Briemes into the ironclad to soften it up, bombard with a few frigates, and then maybe kill it with your aramda.