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Well that went reasonably well. What solutions did you guys come up with? I ended up going with a twist on something fairly vanilla. The risk of Molach supporting himself into Eng was very high by my estimation, so the obvious response to that is Iri-Eng, Nth S Iri-Eng, and Edi-Lvp. There's one glaring problem with that though - Wal-Lvp and Lon-Yor would put me in an awkward position in the fall where I can't be sure of getting a center. So I put a little twist on it.
If Molach is going to support himself into Eng, he's nearly guaranteed to order Wal-Eng with Lon support. Leaving Lon open is simply too great of a risk. Worst-case scenario he does order Lon-Eng, then whatever, I get to take both home centers and I just have to chase down that one fleet (he'd have to order into Bre or Bel no matter what and then I'd get builds to kill him off). So that's an acceptable worst-case scenario, certainly better than him taking Eng without me taking anything useful.
However, it also works well against the possible Lon-Yor + Wal-Lvp counter. In that case we bounce in Lvp, and I'm sitting on Edi + Lon. I just stay put and position my fleets and I'm guaranteed one center in the fall as planned, then it's just cleanup next year. Kinda nice. This was the moveset that (IMO) had the fewest holes - the ONLY hole was Lon-Eng with Wal support, but that costs him BOTH home centers so I guessed it to be his least-likely set of moves.
So share your solutions if you'd like - I'd like to see if someone concocted something better. 
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Iri-Eng, Nth s Iri-Eng, Edi-Yor was my suggested little twist. Guarantees a safe channel and takes one English centre against any combination of moves.
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my far-too-overcomplicated solution to the problem also included a EDI-YOR move and support into ENG, but kept IRI in place to guarentee and LVP or LON fall in 2010. This lets England get NTH if he really wants in. Eventually he could grab NWY, but in doing so, the Isles fall. And you indicated that you didnt want any French cores threatended - NWY is Russian.
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rho21 Wrote:Iri-Eng, Nth s Iri-Eng, Edi-Yor was my suggested little twist. Guarantees a safe channel and takes one English centre against any combination of moves.
Yeah, I liked that quite a bit too. The Edi-Yor thing accomplishes the goals quite nicely. I have a slight preference though for taking Lvp instead of Lon because it's slightly more "efficient" in that it allows me to be moving towards the Russian front sooner. Say I have the army take Lvp this year and Lon next year, it could immediately convoy in the following spring turn. If it does it in opposite order, it'll need to use the spring turn to move into position to convoy, and that's not to mention the out-of-position fleet that would have to stay back in convoy. So that's the very slight difference that pushed me to go this route.
waterbat Wrote:my far-too-overcomplicated solution to the problem also included a EDI-YOR move and support into ENG, but kept IRI in place to guarentee and LVP or LON fall in 2010. This lets England get NTH if he really wants in. Eventually he could grab NWY, but in doing so, the Isles fall. And you indicated that you didnt want any French cores threatended - NWY is Russian.
Right, but Nth touches Bel, Hol, and Den too, all of which are empty right now. If I had my choice, I'd rather have an English fleet slip into Eng than Nth, as it's got fewer options. So yeah, giving up Nth was less of an option to me than giving up Eng. That's not to mention the Russian front slow-down that holding Den + Kie is. That in and of itself is probably more harmful than an English fleet in Eng is to me.
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My choice was Nth S Iri - Eng and Edi - Lvp
I thought if Molach went Wal - Lvp and Lon - Yor there were odds that he covered everything. What you chose was my second idea, but he should have done Wal S Lon -- Eng. Now its routine to pick up the last center next year.
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pindicator Wrote:My choice was Nth S Iri - Eng and Edi - Lvp
I thought if Molach went Wal - Lvp and Lon - Yor there were odds that he covered everything. What you chose was my second idea, but he should have done Wal S Lon -- Eng. Now its routine to pick up the last center next year.
Yeah, that was my very first idea, but the risk of him ordering Wal-Lvp and Lon-Yor made it not worth it to me.
Not sure I agree that it would have been good for him to order Lon-Eng instead. Doing that basically cedes ALL of his home centers, at which point all he can really do is play the "Pirate" role of just trying to stay alive. It would have been pretty easy to run him down and sink his last ship.
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Argh, I did make a mistake. Sort of. I wanted to guarantee 3 builds, so I used Nth to support Swe-Nwy. That turned out to be unnecessary, so I should have focused on preventing ENG instead. I was THISCLOSE to changing Nth to do the same as last turn, but in the end I decided to just go with this. I can deal with it just fine as I'm getting 3 builds, but it's still annoying.
Few of the notables:
1) I took a stab at Warsaw just because. Didn't expect it to work.
2) I still have a very real shot at solo here. I just need Stp and Lon. And to not let F Eng snipe a center  . I can prevent him from taking Bre or Mao no problem. The main problem is he might slip into Belgium because Bur will need to support Munich. I could guess and try to bounce Bel, but that could be quite bad if I guessed wrong.
3) Because I was guaranteed to get 3 centers, I did need to make sure all 3 home centers were empty. This has turned out to be kind of fortunate because Matt has now moved in on Munich. Makes sense, he needs to poke a hole in me ASAP because I'm at 16 centers now and he can't stop me from getting +2.
4) If Rowain disbands Lvn, I win. I don't think he will, but I'm ruling nothing out with the way this game has gone.
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So do you have a plan for conquering St Petersburg? There are six provinces adjacent to it, including water, so you can force your way in if you can occupy four of them (presumably Barents, Norway, Finland, Bothnia). Or three of them if you can also cut support from two Russian units adjacent to StP. Can you get to that state?
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T-hawk Wrote:So do you have a plan for conquering St Petersburg? There are six provinces adjacent to it, including water, so you can force your way in if you can occupy four of them (presumably Barents, Norway, Finland, Bothnia). Or three of them if you can also cut support from two Russian units adjacent to StP. Can you get to that state?
It's really hard for me to plan far in advance because I'm having such a hard time predicting Rowain's actions. I mean, I'm assuming he'll order Lvn-Stp with Mos support, but if he doesn't, I could take Stp this year. Who knows. General plan is to convoy the English isles army over to Nwy after taking Lon this year, but other than that, it's just going to be trying to make best possible moves on a turn-by-turn basis. I can of course force it with 4 tiles, but it's quite possible I could do it with just 3 at this point. The army in Prussia is useful in that respect. I'll probably be ordering something like Nwy-Stp and Swe-Bot and just see what happens. I'd really like Nth to be getting up there quicker, but England being alive this turn makes that difficult.
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Ok, I owe you all an update on this year. The tactics for the spring turn were actually really interesting, so I wanted to walk through the thought process for those moves. This was the map before the spring turn:
![[Image: RB3%20Spring10.jpg]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/16549110/RB3%20Spring10.jpg)
There are two puzzles I needed to solve here.
1) I need to guarantee a capture of London without losing any of my centers.
2) I need to get through the year without losing any of my centers on the RT front so that a capture of Stp wins the game.
It was actual pretty difficult to solve both of these. Ignore the fact that England ordered the generic Eng-Lon, and consider England's options here. Things Molach could have ordered that could have hurt me:
A) Eng-Mao. This means he takes Portugal. This is especially bad because that's going to be REALLY hard to chase down - it'll mean my fleets are screwing around in the Atlantic instead of getting my 18th center. I can NOT allow this to happen
B) Eng-Bel. This is better than Eng-Mao, but I literally cannot stop this. So if he orders this, can I set myself up in such a way as to recapture Belgium in the fall without losing Holland to a retreat? That's pretty difficult too.
C) Eng-Bre. This seems bad if I cover Mao, but it's not as bad as it seems as it's easier to recapture in the Fall without consequences.
So B) is the most likely here as it's the most difficult to defend against IMO, but I cannot allow A) to happen, so I need to cover that too. So looking at the above map, I spent a LONG time trying to figure out how to manage this. The main problem is that using Burgundy or Munich is not an option because of puzzle #2. Then it hit me and I ordered this:
![[Image: RB%20Diplo3%20Spring10%20Orders.jpg]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/16549110/RB%20Diplo3%20Spring10%20Orders.jpg)
The main hangup here is you need 2 units touching Belgium and 1 unit touching Holland, while also setting myself up to take London AND covering Mao. As far as I could tell, this is really the only way to do it. There is no real counter England has to these moves. He could have taken Brest, but that would have been an easy recapture in the fall while London falls.
So that solves #1. Now for the other front:
I've overextended for Warsaw here. I only need Stp to win. Here's the thing though. In theory they can't really stop me from taking Stp. I also have the south permanently stalemated. As a result, the only way to prevent a solo is to take a German center. The problem is, this is actually very possible with this setup. The main problem is I might have gotten a bit too aggressive in taking Sweden (though in my defense, that extra unit was vital in killing England this year), because I have no fleet in Bal to help me out with support or an emergency convoy (think Pru->Kie). This means that if Mattimeo and Rowain work together (and they have to at this point), then they can easily displace both Sil and Pru. That means one of them will be destroyed. Imagine a setup where my only units in the fall are A Mun, A Ber, A Bur, and F Bal. That is not enough to hold Munich - in order to do so, I need an army in Kiel.
Keep trying, but there are no permutations where I can ensure Sil & Pru both survive the spring without moving both of them, and there's only one open tile to move to. I was really stumped though - how can I save Munich here?? I considered ordering Par-Bur, Bur-Ruh, Mun-Kie, and eating a Pru/Sil disband. This would likely mean losing Munich in the spring, but maybe I could retake in the fall that way?
Then I realized I needed to do this:
Sil-Mun. Kind of slick. This is still possible to screw up by the way - if RT orders a supported attack on Mun and Sil both, then Sil-Mun bounces and Sil is destroyed. That would have been tricky. However, they did not do that, so I saved Munich. And really, it was unlikely for them to do that because of what their logical goals should be. For them, take Sil/Pru and then try to crack Munich in the fall. They wouldn't expect to take it in the spring, so I went for it.
So that's the spring turn. I'll split the outlook into the fall and going forward into my next post.
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