[SPOILERS] PBEM 8 - Shoot the Moon's Thread

[spacemanmf]

I'd say a trade of two rifles for that city's garrison (which included threee frigates and two tiremes in the city for some reason If those had been 1SE, I couldn't have attacked) was a pretty decent deal.

That's a classic AI move. What use are boats in the city!

[Shoot the Moon]

Yeah, I'm completely at a loss for why he did it, especially considering he has airships and so should have been able to scout out my approaching attack.

In other news, Warriorknight triggered yet another golden age. He switched his research to democracy too. Looks like I will lose the SoL, which really sucks (4t to tech starting next turn, and even with a great engineer and my iron works city I don't think I can make up four turns on it). I should have probably gone for that before biology, but hindsight is 20-20.

I continue to blockade Maya's island cities, and they are quickly declining in population. Next turn I'll post a graph of crop yield to show the effects.

Oh yeah, did I mention Warrior Knight triggered another golden age? Yeah, just what I needed

[Shoot the Moon]

Quiet turns recently. Only real military action is having airships hit some units every so often and still blockading Maya back to the stone ages.

Next turn I will finish the Statue of Liberty. I wound up going after it (had to set some cities on gold to get to the tech in time, but that was fine). I have visibility on the city Warrior Knight is building it in, and EP tracking says he isn't close to getting it done (at 500-600 hammers and making 98 a turn out of a 1005 hammer wonder, so I should be safe as I have one turn left). I am excited to land that, as it will be a significant boost to my empire. 11 Rep. powered specialists certainly sounds nice!

Combustion came in at the end of the most recent turn. I will build a couple destroyers to blockade Warrior Knight and force him to research combustion himself. He decided to go for assembly line, which will be interesting as now he can whip Infantry. In response I am going to go physics (already partially researched from GS bulb) --> artillery. Physics will also be nice to get some airships out to scout more efficiently and allow me to be smarter about how many defenders I have to leave in cities. If the answer is "not all that many" I may hit Maya with artillery and rifles, with machine guns to protect the stacks.

[Shoot the Moon]

So a couple turns ago, airships came in and allowed me to finally see all of WK's land. Long story short, unless something serious changes, he's probably going to win. I should be able to survive until he wins by space, but it doesn't look too promising for me to be able to win myself. I would have to conquer Mayan lands to really have a chance, but the problem is that the second I do so he will know (because of airships) and will then be able to move in himself. I could be close to conquering Maya right now (in 10t time I could get somewhere around 50 rifles, 10-15MGs and a fair few artillery together), but the issue is I would only be softening up Maya for WK to roll through and or hit my stack once I capture a city.

Perhaps the only upsides here are that I currently have naval superiority over Inca and am blockading and, if a 50% great person roll goes my way (not that they have done that so far this game ) I will be only one tech from landing Sid's Sushi, which could certainly help out.

[spacemanmf]

A man's gotta try, right?

[Shoot the Moon]

A man's gotta try, right?

Oh certainly, I'm not throwing in the towel or anything (well, except maybe on reports here as the important game-deciding decisions have probably already been made). I have a couple plays left to make (found an Inca island city protected by only two rifles, so that will die if he doesn't get more units there) but realistically this game is probably decided. In all honesty, I partly wish we had started closer to each other. At least up to this point in the game, our comparative strength has had more to do with how well we took over our neighbors than with us directly effecting each other for the most part. And with both of us having railroad networks and visibility on literally the entire map every turn, the old adage of needing to be a tech level up on the opponent to attack only holds more true, so there isn't a whole lot I can directly do to slow down Inca at this point militarily.

Who knows though, perhaps with him in State Property we can have a nice SP vs. Corps comparison. Sid's Sushi fueling a bunch of rep specialists could be interesting to see if I can get my GM roll (knock on wood).

[Shoot the Moon]

So, a GE was born instead of a GM. How lovely. I went ahead and founded Mining Inc. with the GE, which is good for 14 base hammers/turn, which is nothing to sneeze at so I guess it wasn't all bad. Probably doesn't compare to Sushi's though, even just in terms of raw hammers being able to workshop/watermill over farms and the like probably gives more than Mining Inc. let alone in specialists and other things I can do with the food like drafting.

[Shoot the Moon]

So in an effort to claw my way back into the game, I dropped off a nice large stack in Mayan lands:



That's 4 infantry, 17 artillery, 16 Machine Guns, 32 rifles, and 7 knights (knights mostly to absorb collateral damage).

So what am I up against? Look at signs:





I also have to be wary of Warrior Knight poaching Mayan lands if I fail.



Demogs after ending turn when I had a bunch of factories complete.

Really though, this is a bit of a last ditch effort. I think I have at least a decent chance at having the attack succeed (although I haven't simmed it out) but really I have no choice but to try. The only other option was to let WK just get a bigger and bigger tech lead, which wasn't exactly going to help.

[Shoot the Moon]

Dammit, was one unit short from razing Cinnamon (a Mayan city) off boats this turn. A mace survived with 0.4 strength left. If I didn't have some 70-80 other units in Mayan lands, I'd almost feel bad for myself

Oh, I razed the first Mayan city with that nice stack of mine. Bombarded down with arty; didn't lose a unit. Didn't move up the stack after though as I didn't want to have to leave units behind. Also split up my stack (moved about half back to cover some railroading workers). Warriorknight moved a stack of 9 arty or so toward that similar front. I think it is so he can defend if I were to move my large stack into his lands instead of pushing on toward Maya (the stack I have could actually make his life interesting, but I think it will do me more good taking Mayan lands) but I wanted to have units that could move back into Constantinople if the need arises. Neither spot my units are on can be hit with anything but Maya's cavalry (some of which need to move into Cinnamon) so it makes no real difference this turn.

[Shoot the Moon]

Regretting not razing Cumin. Even before ending the turn I captured it I thought to myself, "I should really replay this turn and hit raze instead of keep." I would have, except it was during my finals week so I really didn't have time to replay it unfortunately. Oh well.

A great person gets born next turn. 50% odds on a GM for Sushi...getting that will be huge (and probably necessary for me to have any chance of winning this game).