SGOTM 02 - VQ Black

[namliaM]

Ich bien nur ein nederiche Nederlander, *GRMBL* I have allways had a dislike for this language...
I may be sounding somewhat "pushy" (and will again try to limit my "tone" of posting) but I (still) believe strongly we dont need tech at all... and am trying to make that point but appearently no one seems to agree... We needed MT, but we have build/upgraded how many Cavalry? 5-6?
Either we didnt need it (my point of view) or we didnt use it (quite possible too), which in turn makes having it kind of trivial....

My losses vs Germany were totaly UNACCEPTABLE, I totaly agree major on my part. I still live with the discrace and should have learned my lesson after the firsts beating I took... But ... a well bigones... If bismarck would be taking cities... NO I WOULD CARE... Losing Egypt is/will be a major setback as it turned into a quite productive addition to our empire.
Again I blame myself for the German dissaster. However I believe the losses on HC/Mansa were totaly acceptable and believe that declaring at that time was the right thing to do, we had a HUGE advantage over KK and Mansa is no real threat compared to the stack we have there. HC is/was the only one that could pose a threat.. So on the east I disagree we had a "3" front war... as only one was posing a threat, the other 2 had allready "given up" (more or less lol....

Yes the naval situation is uhm... precarious (spelling?) but not a dessaster as naval units cannot take cities... yes they kill galleons the bring units that capture cities and yes the Transports bring units that capture cities... But I feel it is a numbers game. If we transport 5 galleons to Egypt and lose 1 to a Destroyer is not that bad...
On the other hand... Ironclads will not be able to escort the Galleons either.
What is a bigger threat is that Bismarck may well pillage the nets of Kyoto (start some workboats now?) making Kyoto un/lesswippable. But the real war is on land... I think if we "cower" in the Egyptian border for a bit Bismarck should come at us, with a few cannons and a few Cover promoted Grens the Grens will be able to quickly kill Every Cav in sight...

IMHO if we want any tech it be Riffling (re: Riffles & Cavalry) but we want to have a nice stack of upgradable grunt (Crossbows and Pikes) to upgrade to Riffles the moment we get Riffling.
Tho the reason I think we dont need Riffling is that I think most of Bismarck's production will go into Infantry not into Cavalry....

I havent fought many Machine Guns... So I will take your word they are tough... and they should be I guess as their ONLY use is defence.

Re warmongering... I am a builder at heart but have been making the painfull migration to warmongering and have learned so far that numbers do outway a slight tech advantage. If you execute it right... (my last turnset was a perfect example of how NOT to do it!)

 

[pigswill]

bobrath; let's have war against germany; its not going to get easier for being left; even wiping out a couple of cities would tilt the balance; apart from Versailles everything else can be wiped, forget the tasty cottages and towns.

MGs in cities:at least we have CR promotions to help us.

 

[bobrath]

We made some progress and I learned some *very* important lessons.

In 1823, we had so many units in the field that we were losing money at 40% culture. I saw no reason this would go down anytime soon AND killing off HC would be another 4 turns. So I took this opportunity to change out some civics. We are now in Mercantillism, Vassalage, and Police State.

The following turn (1824) I raized Vilcambra.

Learning that suicide cannons take a while to reduce modern defenders down to a reasonable "health" for our grens to have any chance. We seriously need to consider 4+ cannons per MG or Infantry in a city. Obviously the collateral helps, but that initial wave of defenders just eat up cannons.

I also bypassed all resource defenders. They camped on horses and iron without touching me and when I finally wiped out the civ... no more defenders. Save our attackers for their counter stacks and cities!

In 1827, Bizmark completed the Statue of LIberty in Munich. Oh and we came out of anarchy. I also raized Gao and removed HC from this world.

The border with MM stayed constant here and I could move our stack right up next to Djene!

I decided that declaring war right away would keep our troops from having to slog through MM's culture even tho they wouldn't be able to attack right away.

In 1828, Djene and a recently founded city north of Cuzco (called Tekeda) are taken and raized.

At this point I got a mini preview of what Bismark would probably do with his navy... I don't like it!

A landing of 1 cav and some cannons took place near Ning Hsia. I had units in place and dealt with the landing with no loss of improvements.

A transport also came north to pillage a net at Kyoto. Our ironside + 3 frigates finally took it down. That's freakin expensive! I consolidated all our navy in BT on the SE fishes. Yes, all 3 frigates and 1 new iron clad. The rest of Kyoto's resources have been pillaged.

What did I learn here? The moment we declare war on Bismark, we better drop every freaking naval unit we have right next to his naval cities. We don't have near enough naval units to attack destroyers and transports on the sea. We have to hope that coastal defending gives us enough edge to hold him back. There will be ships that get out, but we have to press our army to work faster then his landing parties do. Basically treat our navy as a speed bump to Bizmark's landings. The landings will happen, we just need to delay them.

We're at 57.98% of the 62% domination limit on land. I don't know that keeping anything makes much sense now. By the time any city comes out of revolt, we should have this thing won. My only exception would be Mycenian *as long as* its captured right away. Bizmark has about 4 defenders in all cities and two big naval stacks waiting in harbor.

Mansa is down to two cities and will be cleaned up easily. I took out his northern oil colony in my last year:

I've removed all oil sources for Mansa, so no new ships will be coming out. I've also marked the confirmed oil and uranium spots for Bismark. (If I saw bizmark mining over an existing improvement - its the sparky stuff).

BTW, Here's what's left of Mansa:

He did send a raiding party into Machu Pichu - it will be an annoyance that will need to be dealt with. I think with Bizmark, as long as his raiding parties aren't threatening cities - we can ignore them to a point and just concentrate on hitting him harder and faster. I just don't want to have to go to our backyard to recapture any cities.

One thing that I got a kick out of:

Our GNP spiked during the turns we were in anarcy - yes its profitable! Also notice that the swap to Mercantillism along with wiping out trading partners is just nuking the income of the other AIs. Makes me wish we had gone Merc sooner to possibly slow down some of the research and upgrading going on over there...


Our turnlog is huge (lots of cannon bits being flung at full strength defenders). (Lucky Bastard is still alive). I uploaded it in case anyone wants to see it. View attachment turnlog.txt

The Save

 

[bobrath]

I did not attack Germany in my turns for two reasons:

I want our initial attack to be able to withstand/overcome the counter massivly.
I wanted to see what MM did with his navy. As I stated above, I'm glad I did. If we don't blockade Bizmark in at the very start of the war, we're going to feel it in a very bad way. I'd suggest that Namliam spend a few turns getting frigates into place for the dual blockade. They need to be 1 turn away from totally blocking the ports before we declare. I know they won't win out totally, but at least we'll have the coastal defense working for us and if it slows down the landings by even one turn, that's a good thing.

 

[namliaM]

If we fear domination we could gift Bismarck a city or 2 before declaring war...

 

[bobrath]

All of our cities have popped to their BFCs, so I'm only fearing domination if we start capturing cities and having them pop on us. 3 or 4% isn't going to happen over night due to border pops. Hokkiado is fully covered and I don't know that any of the ring (NW side) is due to pop the 3rd level of culture - course I didn't check that.

Does anyone think we really need to capture any more cities? If not, then domination should be a moot point.... oops unless our cites on Bismarks eastern border expand dramatically when we raize the german ones near them. Its possible that Alexandria and Elephantine might gobble up some land. Not sure.

Course gifting means we have another city we'll have to take away from Bismark down the line. I wonder if he'd even take a former Chinese or Mongolian city.

 

[pigswill]

Good work bobrath. I've had a look at the save; it occured to me that ifwe loaded an egypt stack onto galleons which we kept just outside biz's borders in the inland sea it would take 1 turn to sail them to the lumbered hill ne of berlin and unload them there. All biz's units are already embarked apart from 2mg so destroy the 2mg and berlin is ours, the navy disappears along with embarked units. Risks are Biz declares first and wipes out our embarked units, also could set sail on very first turn of war (suicide blockade might keep them in port).

 

[Cosmichail]

I think if we "cower" in the Egyptian border for a bit Bismarck should come at us, with a few cannons and a few Cover promoted Grens the Grens will be able to quickly kill Every Cav in sight...

Good strategy and he will likely attack the stack before he enters Germany.

Great stuff Bob and we see that it's tough taking out modern units. We do have an element of production on the ring enough to aid us as well should it be difficult at some point to get forces from Hokkaido.

Pigswill that idea is smart as it would be a great defensive position on a foresthill outside Berlin. Do we have a enough ships to carry them all? We can only do it in one shot. That would be a great way for the two forces to meet up with another from the south once they finish with MM. Razing Berlin would hurt him badly and slow him down quite a bit. I take it we are finished with taking cities and are razing them now. Let's not waste anymore on garrisoning just raze from this point. I even think personally we didn't need that many cities.

My tactical thoughts:

Bismarck will likely go for Cuzco and attack that area as well as old Egypt. Do we need to defend and just let him raze a few? I hate wasting anything on garrisoning and this the time where will need every unit and move quickly with the Bismarck. It looks like it's up to NamliaM to start the battle.

Namliam re cavalry we just didn't really use them but I have massed huge cavalry in my Solo games and done a lot of damage with them. They can be very effective with combat/pinch promotions. Especially with grenadiers in the field and in a stack. One thing you have to remember with battle (since I feel I am a warrior at heart) is that the cavalry move 2 spaces and can advance much faster. Great for pillaging and intercepting invading forces as well as having the ability to strike in the open and return out of a vulnerable spot. Cavalry/cossacks do have one promotion which is great after 30% you can promote to multiple attacks. (forget the promotion name) Having a variety of units in a stack is much better than being limited to one or two I find. Grennies are great attackers but don't do that well in the open.

 

[bobrath]

blitz is the name of the promotion.

Great idea pigswill... Too bad all of our galleons are outside the ring!

 

[LuvToBuild]

What would our chances be to load up a serious assault force from BT and just hit Berlin and maybe another city directly from the sea? I know we take a serious penalty but is it doable? We might catch a good part of his navy in port that way, thus preventing a serious counterattack on BT. Do units loaded on transports not automatically get unloaded and used to defend the city? If not, then this seems like a good way to never have to fight the transports or destroyers, provided we can throw enough cannons at him in the first turn to take out the city.

 

[bobrath]

Its possible, but there's some lag there while we rebuild the nets that MM pillaged and get the ships over. I don't know that we can afford to let Bismark go unmolested that long.

 

[pigswill]

We've got 4 galleons cowering in Kyoto iirc. 12 cannon vs 2MG with amphibious penalty would be interesting;few frigates to bombard defences would help (probably go from 0% to 0.1%). We'd also be looking at combining the remaining units in egypt into one uberstack and invading simultaneously.
My understanding is that embarked units don't contribute to city defence (coz technically they're on the boats not in the city), hope I'm right on that one.

 

[namliaM]

Nothing much really happened...
I finished off MM (not to much to it) in 1833 AD and had to take some turns to heal...

Lost 2 suicide cannons and 1 68% chance cannon against Mansa, and lost 3 grens and a Cavalry (way to much IMHO...)

1837 as I felt everyting was in place and healed enough... I declared war on Bismarck.
This was the plan, those pesky AI incist on building cities dont they? In just a few turns Bismark rebuild a city where MM's capitol used to be...

In 1838 Leipzig (rebuild city in our "backyard") and Nuremberg (the new city in the east) fell... In the west there is not much going on really I kept the defencive posture, incuring some colatorol damage, including this:

In case you cannot make it out in the Image, YES they are ARTILLERY !

I tried the blockade Idea, but unfortunatly foreign ocean is not considered to be culture/coastal. But is just actual Ocean.


I lost 7 Frigates to destroyers... I had some frigate about to work as a detection net... But wow.... They and Did not stand a chance in HELL and were found just like that... so I started withdrawing the Frigates... losing 7 in the progress...

I also lost 3 cannons, 3 cavalry and 3 Grens to Bismarck, all cavs and Grens were at >65% (IIRC) battles .
Killing 9 Cavalry, ~5 Riffleman, 2 cannons an artilery unit and razing 2 cities.
A better score this time around...

As for the tactical situation... Alexandria I moved a small stack out to the forest south of it... Using all of the Combat 2 (or more) promoted units, leaving all of the (Mostly) CR and CG promoted units in the city (for now) along with some unpromoted grunt and an Explorer medic.


Elephantine, we have a visiting Artilery and an assortment of units there, most of the are full health (h) and some are injured (i). Some of the injuries are severe...


I had most of the Cavalry currently in Elephantine inbetween Elephantine and Heliopolis where the lone Cavalry still remains as a "quick response team" if Bismarck should deside to head for Heliopolis. But they were need to pick off the advance on Elephantine which is now clean as you can see.
As a (secondary) result Elephantine is somewhat light on defence.

But from here on in we should be "clear sailing" ?? up to (but not including) Berlin...
Bismarck has kept his force in Berlin, in Berlin... for some reason... So I kept on whipping Kyoto for Ironclads mostly... Tho I ran the overrun into Crossbows (I think) as with the Drydock we "overproduce" hammers for the Ironclad and an Ironclad can be whipped nicely after 1 clean turn (no overrun) of production. I think you can do Ironclad, Ironclad, Something else kind of rithm ... Just keep on whipping (with 1 turn of production in between).
There should be a Galleon in Kyoto on "skip turn"(becomming active each turn).

There is another small issue of some stealing Barbarians. This barb city ripped us a worker... that was mining the gold hill... Oh and I am taking this moment to inform you that there will be some Goto's left, either to the front line(s) or (like this one) to a certain destination.


Hokkaido is mostly building Cannons, with some notable exceptions
Osaka has some happiness issues and is the sole reason (IIRC) that I was running 20% culture. Thus the Synagoge.
Madrid I have building some Cavalry to act as a responce force on Hokkaido in case of a landing. As are some of the Pikes...
The workboat in Koisan is to replace the nets we will be losing soon. Dont know if its worth replacing the nets... but heck... If not cancel the build and add the farm....

Also on Hokaido some goto's may be left...

In former china I am building mostly Cavalry, as these units have the longest way to travel ....


All others (Egypt and Incan lands) are on mostly Pikes, but maybe should switch to some direct Grennies to save some upgrade costs. You may have noticed that I burned thru quite a bit of our bankaccount.
There are some Galleons and Frigates on their way from Hokkaido to the Ring, but due to the presence of the Destroyers they are fleeing North-west towards Thebes, where they may be used to shuttle Cavalry from China to Egypt. Our eastern route is (still) clear (to Incan lands) but there are 5 or 6 destroyers of the coast of Khoisan.

The Save

 

[namliaM]

All in all a very mediocre set.... I was a bit slow on declaring war on Bismarck in fear of losing our western stacks that were left injured from HC and MM.
Also I kept quite a defencive posture on the west to not get bated in to early by Bismarck.
The big wave came in ~1838 and I felt now was about the time to start advancing, which is why I moved out the Combat 2 Grens to the forrest, lets see what bismarck does with his force in Berlin....

I couldnt resist this:




Wow that is some power, what Rifle is going to be able to stop that "tank" ?

Good luck on crushing Germany, I hope/expect to not see this game anymore

 

[pigswill]

Another nice turnset. Guess I was wrong about the galleons in Kyoto (old age=impaired memory). Only one civ to go; ok bit of artillery, wonder if we'll get to face tanks (panzers! +50% against tanks; one problem we don't have to worry about).
Time for Cosmichael to make good on his dark jedi stuff.
We should pick up some loose change for upgrades once we start razing cities. At this point we may as well raze Mycenae; its a bit late to use Versailles.

 

[Cosmichail]

Burn it all baby.......

Yes the glorious battle shall begin. It appears Bismarck has lightened up and only has a few destroyers running around. We should be able to do quite a bit of damage to him now. The Machinegunners will be problematic but cannons should aid in that. That's some impressive grennie there Namliam.

I won't be able to play until tomorrow evening but really want to play this one. I feel that we are nearing the end of our game and soon shall depart from one another. I looked at the saves and was impressed with our military might and sandwiching forces. WE SHALL SQUEEEEEEEEZE him like a jelly donut MOHAAAAAAA. I think we have done quite well overall and don't think we will be up against panzers. He hasn't got infantry yet so that's a long way off I'm sure. By the time he does he will be dust I'm sure.

 

[bobrath]

Amazing that he has artillery and not infantry.... Guess we should be glad.

I too am hoping that I don't see the playing side of this game again.

 

[bobrath]

Just looked at the save... We're dangerously close to domination. Once we start reducing the German borders (on the egypt side) we could easily pickup 2% not to mention that running culture is going to pop some borders. I honestly think we have more then enough units to take down Bizmark right now. Those are some massive stacks we have on both sides.

I'd suggest shutting off all production of units, switching to wealth, and just go, go, go. I'd also turn the culture percentage to 0. Honestly at this point I don't care if our citizens are unhappy, they don't need to "do" anything.

I'd disband every worker I find (saves upkeep costs).

If you really want to produce some more units, make em cavs and just go on a pillage spree. Heck double promote em to withdrawl and if Bismark wants to pull defenders out of the cities to ambush let him. If we get lucky and withdraw then so be it if not... oh well. Either way his defenders are not in teh cities and those are our primary goals.

Sorry if this sounds pushy or demanding, but I've seen that domination land percentage creeping up each save and its got me scared. I'd hate to "lose" the game to a simple math mistake. Turn our culture off and wipe Bismark out asap. That gives us the win and the WIN.




Oh and great play on the turns, pleasure to see the brutality going on.

 

[namliaM]

I had a look at the powergraph too.... I think making peace with Bismarck back then was not necesarry. The graph really restorred itself from the first war, but essentialy that is from upgrading to Destroyers (IMHO).
He didnt really bring anything new to the battle ground.

Challange: Finish this game before 1850 !

Oh and bob, Withdraw only works on offence not defence. Good idea about the gold production and the Culture reduction... But what did you just say? *Honestly at this point I don't care if our citizens are unhappy*
WTH ??

I really feel our date (even at 1850) can be done much better pre 1700 I think...

 

[bobrath]

I did not know that (re withdraw)... Time to go back to *all* the games I ever pillaged in and change up my cavs to something smarter!

Happy citizens? there we go, happy rulers!

Once we finish this game up, I'll probably go back to a few turnsets back and retry your war on three fronts - just to see. I'd guess that we were a tad too agressive there, but it would be interesting to see. Again, once we're done with the real game - don't want to get into a violation of SG protocol don't ya know.