[Spoiler] Fintourist loses his multiplayer virginity

[Old Harry]

[Molach]

I am teased

[Fintourist]

Ok, it's already almost 1 AM in Finland, so all the juicy details have to wait until tomorrow. (Damn work that forces me to spend Sunday-evenings preparing presentation materials) However, I can start my war reporting by stating the obvious background things:

Why did I attack Sareln?

• Sareln has been since the start my toughest competitor when it comes to actually winning the game
  
• As stated previously, we are technologically almost equal, with all others about 10k beakers behind
  
• The goal of the attack is to damage Sareln significantly and leave myself as the clear leader in the game
  
• I really did not want to wait with my move until we both have significant military, industrial units etc.
  

My hypothesis has been all the time that if I start a full war with Sareln it will simply destroy both of us. Our production capabilities are similar enough that our fight will end up being a stalemate (or at least very costly), which lets Azza & Viqsi to catch up. Therefore the requirements for my attack have always been:

• It has to be a total surprise
  
• It must be quick and decisive
  

I've been dreaming about attacking Sareln forever, but my actual planning started ~20 turns ago, when the era of Gunpowder units and, more importantly, Astronomy started approaching.

To be continued...

PS. Based on the tracker and our normal turn pace, it should be any minute now, when Sareln is going to open the new save... It's only a game, but I can't help myself feeling bad for him.. Depending on his attitude towards this game quite high values could be measured using the regoarrar's scale of disappointment...

[Fintourist]

Let's continue still a little bit about the starting situation. Here is the relevant area on T143 (the turn I finished Astronomy).

T143 Map:



As a recap, cities that were razed on T147 were:

• Dill
  
• Elderflower
  
• Fennel
  
• Cumin
  

Needless to say that my position regarding controlling those waters between us improved a bit..

[Fintourist]

Ok, let’s start reporting with the more straightforward part of my attack.

Operation “Crossing the Bay”

As the name suggest, the goal of this action was to attack Sareln’s most western cities, Fennel & Cumin, that are located on the other side of the bay that separates our core areas. Check the previous post for the map! Fennel is Sareln’s 4th city and Cumin was no. 7, which means that both cities have a fair bit of infrastructure and third-ring cultural borders. My hypothesis was that given enough time, these cities will start pumping annoying amounts of navy that will threaten my core cities. Both of them have quite a few workshops that they can work already. Therefore something had to be done about it..

The first Galleon for this operation was whipped on Turn 144 (one turn after finishing Astronomy) in “Come on Tim!”. 3 Janissaries were already transported to area from nearby cities.



After loading the units, the first Galleon started its travel to east towards Sareln’s lands. Meanwhile “Bollittieri’s” whipped the second Galleon for the attack. How are those ships going to reach Sareln’s cities though…



Well, luckily (and unsurprisingly) I had pre-built a fort, which could be finished at the start of the T146 by a single worker. The new Galleon picked couple of Janissaries from “Diving Volley” and then both ships advanced to the staging tile.
Note that without circumnavigation bonus it would have been impossible to attack Fennel & Cumin without giving Sareln a warning one turn before the attack. (Although in the end Sareln did not tech Optics in time despite being able to 1-turn it and my ships could have been placed 1 tile east of the staging tile)



At the beginning of T147 my scout that had been hanging out in Sareln’s core area (one of the main reasons why I kept open borders with a civ possessing the GLH) provided me the latest information on Sareln’s defenses:
Sareln seemed to have absolutely no idea that I’m coming for him. Due to ambitious attack penalty already one whipped musket per city would have probably lead to Sareln losing 1 or 2 cities less. The Great Artist hanging out in Cumin felt simply like an extra punch in the nuts.



Because of non-existent defenses, “the battle of Fennel” was only trivial. Nice cash though!



The same applies for “the battle of Cumin”



This left me in a situation where I still have 4 Janissaries sitting in my Galleons and I consider attacking “Allspice” next turn. Although if Sareln can whip there a decent unit I might reconsider my approach.

Orange arrow illustrates the thought that I played with before the attack. If I had kept Cumin, I could have attacked Ginger next turn. This could have been a move that might have been missed by Sareln. But in the end I decided against it (more of that later). I guess I should be satisfied already with my current results.



To be continued…

[Old Harry]

I'm having a particularly boring day at work so more please!

[Fintourist]

I'm having a particularly boring day at work so more please!

Unfortunately my work day will be hectic for a good while from now on, which means that the continuation will come earliest in the evening

[Fintourist]

And yeah! Let’s get to the real beef!

Operation “Sneaking in the North”

Again, my non-imaginative name for the operation captures the nature of the second part of my attack. Sareln settled his 2nd and 3rd cities, Dill and Elderflower, on his northern coast. Dill should be by far the most powerful city in the game (even when all the Bureaucracy capitols are considered) and consequently razing or capturing it would be a critical strike against Sareln’s economy.

As already stated, the planning of this attack started already about 20 turns ago. First challenge was organizing all the Janissary logistics. Then, in order to make this attack as quick as possible the galleons with longest travel time had to be produced at the same turn when I finished Astronomy:



There are couple of noteworthy things in the above picture:

• Just to state it clearly: the galleys from Wimbledon and Continental Grip auto-upgraded to galleons
  
• The galley on the top of the screenshot transported 2 Janissaries from the western part of my empire so that Sareln’s scout who was exploring my land could not see any threatening unit movements
  
• Sareln’s scout moved on T143 on to a perfect tile from my perspective. That’s probably the only tile in the area where there is no risk that Sareln can spot the Galleon that is born in “Continental Grip”. If Sareln had not moved to that tile I would have been forced to cancel our open borders agreement (I would have offered them back for 10gpt in order to make it only look like business), which might have tipped him off that I’m onto something
  

On T144 I finished my 3rd Galleon in “Angle Games” and thus completed my northern fleet. Below you can see my original attack plan:



My original plan had one significant flaw. It did not take into account that “Lemongrass” was about to pop borders. Lemongrass got its third ring borders on T139 (if I recall correctly) and that left me with a challenge: If Sareln gets Optics (which seemed almost certain at that point), the staging tile on T145 won’t be in the fog and I have to show my invasion army at latest one turn before the attack.

Therefore I came up with a different approach:



If you can’t sail the route south of the island, you have to sail through it!

Consequently I whipped a settler on T142 in “Drop Shot”. Transported it with a galley to the island and then on T146…



…”Rafa’s Spin” was founded and my fleet advanced to the final staging tile. (As already said, in the end Sareln neglected Optics and the original plan would have also worked, but he could have 1-turned it almost at any turn after T143.
Similarly as with my more Southern attack, I scouted the target cities with my sentry that had been sailing circles for the last 50 turns:



And again, (close to) no defenses were in place to protect Sareln’s second and third cities from the raging and pillaging Finns/(Vikings)/((Ottomans)).

I started with the main prize:



Some fairly valuable buildings survived the attack:



Buddhist Shrine, Pyramids and of course… The Great Lighthouse. You can see from my screenshots that GLH’s immediate effect on my max tech rate was more than 80 beakers… That’s quite much..

But always when I capture a city like this, I ask myself: What would Sunrise do?



And so I burnt the city to the ground!

Elderflower had a fortified Praetorian as a garrison unit. My first Janissary lost the battle with approximately 10 % odds, but the second attacker cleaned up comfortably and so the city was mine… At least for two seconds before I burnt it also..



This left me with couple of spare units to go and get some war spoils, and so I went and captured couple of workers. Someone has said that you can never have too many of them! (at least if you get them for free)



Afterwords, summary of results and next steps will follow later today or tomorrow!

[Fintourist]

Summary of gains and losses so far:

Fintourist gains

• 638 gold (this will also help me to finish Printing Press already on T148)
  
• 3 workers
  

Fintourist losses

• 1 Janissary
  
• (Opportunity cost of building & whipping military instead of growing and building multipliers)
  
• (Increased unit supply cost, maybe 100 gold so far)
  

Sareln losses

• 4 cities with 32 pop points
  
• Fair bit of city improvements (worth several hundred hammers)
  
• The Great Lighthouse
  
• The Pyramids
  
• Buddhist Shrine (+17 gpt)
  
• 1 Great Artist
  
• 3 Workers
  
• 1 Praetorian
  
• 3 Warriors
  

The fight will continue to some extent and I hope to still have the upper hand. Nevertheless, the exchanges will surely become more even. Exciting turns

[Old Harry]

So long as Azza doesn't pile on I can't see Sareln recovering from that. Bravo!