AG10 - OCC Conquest (Emperor)

[Greebley]

Actually, I am not sure it makes a difference. Sure we can get Mass production in 18 but then we run out of money. At even money it takes 50 turns to get MP (which is the same as MT). So MT will be 50 turns, maybe we can get it for a bit less - but not by much. Stealing would get it instantly but we still would probably have the 50 turns.

In other words, no matter what we do, the second tech will take 50 turns, unless we disband most of our units.

If I had been thinking, I would have remembered that flight kills the colossus and recommended getting that one last. Ah well.

The short of it is that tanks are not going to become available to us and we have to fight the hardest part of the war without them.

I might go for the steal simply because then we get tanks in 51 turns instead of 68. If we fail it is 100 which doesn't seem worse than 68...

Checking it out, disbanding would get us tanks in 42 (or 25 with a successful steal). Unfortunately, we need those units and it would take too long to rebuild.

So my thought is that we need to go to war now and we need to do so without the benefit of tanks. Stealing or not makes little difference.

Any further thoughts on this? Did I miss something?

[Edit2: We get commercial dock with Mass Prod, but this won't help by very much]

[Edited for clarity]

 

[Aggie]

Greebley, you basically come to the same conclusions as I do. This will be a very tough phase of the game.

 

[Greebley]

Some minor comments on things I noticed:

We can get a plane every turn if we go negative food - we would need to mine 3 squares. When we get low on food we could then go back by irrigating again.

The lone scientist doesn't make sense here. We could have been at 0% lux with an enterainer - or to put it another way, that lone scientist is costing us 22 gpt.

 

[microbe]

How about mobolization? No use for bombers?

 

[Greebley]

That is correct Microbe. I think that was in Aggies turn log IIRC. I had heard it elsewhere too.

It may [Edit: will] be worth it once we get tanks though

 

[6thGenTexan]

More thoughs:
Toss Abe a bone of another tech to decalare on France. No, they cannot do anything but the are weaker that us and may draw away some of the tanks to remove him.

I left most of our troops outside the city. If we can bring them back in, will we look stronger to France and deter them from going straight for Berlin?

I have no clue on how to get our two techs, That's why I stoppeed where I did.

 

[Greebley]

Preturn: I trade Sci Meth and Corp with America to get communism Switch build to police station

IBT: Get Police Station

1832: 68 turns is just too long to wait for tanks. I think we need the steal to have any chance. I try for it... Oh please, oh please work... Succuess! We get Mass Production! MT in 50 turns.
I cancel our deal with france and get oil, rubber, and 13 gpt for Alliance vs France and incense. I bombard out the French side of things to try to protect my units.
Start commercial dock.

IBT: Here is the big counter attack turn...

Argh! France and Maya make peace breaking the deal from last turn. Of all the terrible timing. Now it will cost us big bucks to get them back in.

IBT: Some tanks show up

1834 AD: Kill the nearest tanks

IBT: A lot more tanks show up.

1836 AD: We do not have the resources to kill all the tanks. Not good.

IBT: We get massively bombed and lose several buildings... We are totally not prepared for a war against France ourselves. We are also attacked by some of the injured tanks and lose some units.

1838 AD: Ummm... I am not sure allying will save us... I doubt we can survive 20 turns of war...

IBT: Bomb bomb bomb. Bombard bombard bombard.. there go our bombers (4 left).

1840 AD: Destroy some tanks.

1842-1844 France will not talk

1846 AD: Make straight up peace

1848 AD: Use our leader to get our stock exchange back.

1850 AD:

Notes:

Maya and France making peace the turn after we signed an alliance was really, really bad. I hope I didn't blow it by not reforging, but it would have cost a huge bundle (rather than them giving us 13 gpt).

You know that plan about disbanding units to get MT faster... the one I said was stupid... Well we are now going to get MT in 26 turns at + 13 gold due to lack of units.

We have 4 cavalry, 7 infantry, 2 flak (which did kill some french bombers... It was actually the boats that were really brutal and pretty much unstoppable), 31 artillery, 23 foreign workers.

We Need an Iron trade to get Iron for a new factory

We allowed France and Maya to get too unbalanced and it may have been fatal. I think we needed to keep our abilty to turn on France open to win. Maybe tanks will help - though probably not as they will have MA and MI by then.

Good luck to the next player.

 

[Greebley]

Here is the mini-map. Not much changed...

Note that I made straight up peace so we can go to war whenever we want to.

 

[Aggie]

This sounds ver very bad... I will be able to comment in 5 hours.

ROSTER (15 turns in peace time, 10 turns when at war):
Aggie
6thgentexan
betazed------out until further notice
Greebley (holiday from July 24th to August 8th)
homeyg-------up
Microbe-------on deck

 

[Aggie]

Greebley, we will have Panzers, not tanks. That should help. And if we get in the MA we migfht get Mech Infs, with a bit of luck.

So I think that we still have a shot. But we were a bit unlucky in this game. We probably should have turned our attention on France and not the Maya. But we weren't able to see that they were more advanced. We also made a poor choice with the Germans. Panzers take too long to get in this game. We probably would have a better chance with Riders or Sipahi. But we could have had an easier game if only France needed 15 turns more to get in the modern age. It appears that we just missed it by an inch.

But as long as we are alive there is hope.

 

[Greebley]

Agreed Aggie,
They were just rough turns to play.

I did realize there is one thing that would really help us. If we built an airfield that was non-coastal, then the bombers wouldn't be subject to the bombardment by ships. Then the ships would damage the infantry instead which would heal, rather than doing killing damage on the bombers.

The flak was useful, but took time to become so. If we have more next time, the bombers will be less of a threat.

One thing that might also work well is to damage a large number of boats and then take out the coastal town near us. We have the potential to sink a large number of ships. Taking out that coastal town would also mean they couldn't attack us from that town and heal right away (they would have to go farther to heal).

When we were at war, the fact that there are units in our lands and seas really hurt our food and gold. We ended up being able to less easily balance the budget with tanks on the land squares and boats on the sea. This will be less severe when we aren't trying to research at the same time we are trying to fight. I had to irrigate more squares (lowering production) to keep the city from starving.

We may not want our defensive line. We can't possibly hold it unless we do manage to get MI. The tanks won most of the time even attacking the hill squares with defenses when we used only infantry. If the French don't have MA, then I would definitely consider removing them.

We need to rebuild our factory, barracks, civil defense, and can choose to rebuild our Cathedral, and Colosseum - we may not need to if we are at 10% Lux. There might be a few other things we need as well.

We did not have sufficient artillery to handle the influx of tanks. I think when we do attack next we have to get Mayan (and American?) support to soak up the tank attacks. We would have had a much easier time if the alliance hadn't been cancelled a turn after I forged it. That was terrible timing for us. Had some of the tanks (and especially boats - they were the real problem - destroying our improvments) been busy elsewhere it would have been easier.

If France stores most of his destroyers in that near town we may be able to take it on the first turn and destroy his navy i.e. "Pearl Harbor" him.

Make sure you build the non-coastal airfield for any new bombers
Make sure you rebuild the barracks and factory

 

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

Wouldn't it make sense to station a few Fighters on that Airfield as well?
It's pretty interesting how many experienced players still miss the of stationing any Aircraft in frontline cities.

I tried an OCC military win a couple of times in c3c, and failed miserably everytime.
It seems like the new FP really helps the AI when they manage to reach a certain size. Unlike ptw, where this just meant more useless towns, a 50% land AI is now a real threat even on Monarch.

Signing in the Maya and Americans - wouldn't that just mean France will hit the 66% soon?

Keep it up!

 

[Aggie]

I agree that we MUST get the bombers out of the city (on an airfield). I knew it but forgot to mention it

France will win the game by settling all unclaimed land (but only just). We have to hope that the Maya settle on a few spots.

This game is winnable imho, but we missed a couple of opportunities.

 

[homeyg]

Got it! May or may not play today...

 

[Greebley]

Getting fighters would help. Flak was better since I could build it quickly and it wouldn't be hit by the boats.

The biggest problem was that we were not ready to go it alone vs the whole French empire. If I known that would be the case I would have held off the war. I was hoping our capitol would be the better defended spot and so the AI would primarily go after the easier Mayan cities.

Not building an airfield outside the city was simply an oversight on my part. I did not realize how much of a pounding we were going to take; nor did I think of this solution until after I played.

 

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

Like everyone, I didn't value Airfields any high before c3c. But just try to play the WW2 conquest as China, and you learn to love them.

 

[homeyg]

Sorry about the wait, but I'm going to have to be skipped (got side tracked with chores and what not and couldn't find time to play).

 

[Greebley]

So what is our plan?

Wait until we get Panzers to attack? That seems to be what makes the most sense. We need time to rebuild units anyway.

Note that we need resources. We do not have a resource deal yet (It broke when the Mayans declared peace).

Good Luck Microbe

 

[Aggie]

Yes, we need panzers. It is a bad thing to let France grow, but we have no choice atm.

ROSTER (15 turns in peace time, 10 turns when at war):
Aggie--------on deck
6thgentexan
betazed------out until further notice
Greebley (holiday from July 24th to August 8th)
homeyg
Microbe------up

 

[microbe]

preturn: I sell Sanitation to America for WM+31g. I shut off research for now.

IBT France starts SETI. It means it gets Computers.

(1)1852AD: ZZZ

(2)1854AD: I renegotiate peace with Maya and get MT by 97gpt+312g. We get Fission as free tech.

France is up Rocketry and Computers, so we cannot trade. I sell Fission to Maya for everything he has: 1871g+ruber+oil+wines+112gpt+Amphibious war. I do not get horses or iron as we do not need it, and they would increase the risk that the trade is broken (then we'd lose the gpt!).

We have 1881g with 143gpt.

Switch Commercial Deck to Factory.

(3)1856AD: notice France is in Anarchy. I get coal+1273g from France for incense+27gpt, then try a safe steal. We get Computers! I then buy 4 lux from France by 8gpt. Lux drop to 0.

(4)1858AD: ZZZ

(5)1860AD: ZZZ

(6)1862AD: Espionage to America for WM+9gpt+20g. I upgrade 7 infantry to MI.

IBT France builds UN. BTW it's democracy now.

(7)1864AD: ZZZ

(8)1866AD: I build a civil defense.

(9)1868AD: I start a panzer. We don't need cathedral, as with the lux from France we can go lux 0 anyway, and without the lux it will be 10. But with WW in mind, we may want to build it at some point.

(10)1870AD: ZZZ

OK, I think we've got all required techs. We have to strike France before it gets Synthetic Fibers, which is two techs away.