SGOTM 10 - Smurkz

[Backwards Logic]

Press Alt-X, then right-click the dots. That'll remove them. I doubt we'll have any Woody/Guerilla II units to use that trick, and for promos I'd lean toward the combat line /pinch to hit the cities. You'll have a better idea of what we'll need and what's possible than I will.

 

[Niklas]

I believe units unloading lose all their move, regardless of Guerilla II or other.

 

[Xcalibrator]

I'm still not feeling great so I didn't push it--only played 5 turns to 1914. Things are going quite nicely. We have more than enough nukes to take out Roose and Gandhi and will get Radio next turn to build subs. I'm having a couple cities build wealth so we get Radio next turn, but they'll go back to weapons after that. I revolted to Nationhood (we have 7 turns to go on the GA) and am very glad--it turns out that you can draft 3 units per turns instead of 2. AND... Newsheep, with the National Park and all those forest preserves that give 1 extra happiness each is turning out to be a nice little SAMI pump. Seaside is drafting every turn and doesn't miss a beat. Unit production and teching are just awesome with the GA.

Roose has taken Xian from Mao so we have one more city to take but we should be able to attack from China (unless Mao closes borders after we start nuking--I'll position our units so they'll teleport somewhere safe just in case--not in the blast zone .)

I have Moscow building a drydocks to speed up the subs--I think it's well worth the 1 extra unhealthiness. And don't worry--I'll build more cossacks before we attack.

 

[Backwards Logic]

Why on earth did Moscow build a settler? You're not seriously settling the ice canal by Chartres are you? Our entire force is based to the east of Moscow to hit Roosevelt, then Mao. To get there, we'd have to sail the subs with the nukes all the way around France and then back east just to get in position. It'll be a helluva lot quicker to just use Cossacks on land and to rebase nukes in the captured interior cities. Since you have the settler, what would make more sense would be to settle the tile 2 E by 3 N of Chengdu (the tile south of the mountain). We're sailing that way anyway, and you get get your ice canal access a whole lot easier and quicker that going the Chartres route.

I don't have any idea why you're not wasting Gandhi now. Rebase a nuke to St. Pete this turn. The following turn retreat the choke units, gas Bombay, then use the stack of SW of Cossacks St. Pete to clean out the city. After the city is captured, rebase another nuke there and take the other Cossack stack to the plains hill where the pike is fortified. Next turn, nuke Delhi, then use the plains hill stack to wipe Delhi out. Bam, one guy down. There's absolutely no reason to wait any longer on this. Otherwise we're waiting for a sub, then waiting three turns for the sub to reach Delhi, then we're nuking it. Then the sub has to sail back east, we have to wait for the Cossacks to heal, then move them back east to load on the transports, and before you know it another 5 turns have passed and we're still not in position to hit Roosevelt. Not to mention you free up all of those units in Gandhi land for something else, ie, killing Roosevelt. Get rid of him now. If it's Roosevelt you're worried about declaring on us, he likely won't because of his war with Mao, and even if he does, we have destroyers. He has frigates. He's not going to be an issue. If it's global warming you're worried about, if the game is going to be over in 25 turns like you claim then really that's a very small window for GW to screw us over, and it's not a guarantee we get it every turn. If it's diplomacy consequences with Mao, he's not going to care as he's annoyed with Gandhi. Oh yea, and don't forget the ICBM. It should probably be built during the GA so it doesn't take as long.

And yea, you need more Cossacks

 

[Xcalibrator]

Right, the settler is for a canal city NE of Chengdu and I'm planning to send that transport off this turn. Morefish will be sending 2 SAMIs and a cossack on another transport to help out with the attack on Roose. I'll make a note to check if an ICBM is required for Guangzhou--we might be able to reach it from a sub if we get into the northern sea--would be a good idea to have one handy in any case.

The delay on Gandhi was to knock down Bombay's defenses. Even at 0% our cossacks only have around 79% odds. Yes, promos will help, as will the nuking. But I don't want to lose or even damage any units if we don't have to. I'm also waiting out of ignorance over what will happen when we start nuking, and since the results are very likely to be unfavorable I'd rather put it off. I haven't done this before and worry about all the things you mentioned, and even more about the ones we haven't thought of. Granted, my worries are likely overblown, but there's no real rush to take out Gandhi--he's easy to get to and I don't expect to get a lot of use out of Delhi and Bombay, other than freeing up that last hill forest (to be mined) by Broberg and chopping everything in sight. It's more important to me to be able to take out Roose cleanly and then be in good shape to go after Mao right away. However, I'll count up our units and see if we can take out Gandhi before Roose without delaying the latter. Oh, and another reason to wait is we'll be closer to getting Ecology for fallout scrubbing. Yeah, rather lame excuses but putting 'em together...

I'm planning to build a sub in Broberg regardless to use against Churchill's islands so we won't need to haul one over from Moscow. Drafted and built units are being assembled in Novgorod for island hopping, although we'll be bringing some from Cow/Copper, too. You're right that we'll run out of places to draft at some point (although Seaside is pretty near inexhaustible) but we're not far from finishing our teching and we can then crank up the culture slider to give room for another level of drafting. Universal Sufffrage will give us another boost when it comes in about 4 turns.

From the Progress page info it looks like Murky and Xteam will take the top 2 spots but we have a real shot at 3rd. My daily checks show that 5th Element's last save was Nov 28 (1947), Misfits Nov 27 (1958), WhoDat Nov 28 (1944), and Unusual Suspects Nov 27 (1926). Barring the unexpected (massive global warming and starvation?) we should be able to beat all those except 1926--let's hope that upload isn't their last, or it isn't too close to their finish date. In any case, I think we needed to try it this way if we were going to have any shot at a medal. If we fail miserably I apologize, but the alternative 45-turn plan just wasn't looking competitive.

 

[Backwards Logic]

Yea, nukes wipe out any combat odds issues you think you have... And how does freeing all of those troops up against Gandhi not speed up the attack on Roosevelt? He's got 14 troops last I checked, so that's 14 Cossacks to kill them all. And killing him before Roosevelt means there's 14 more Cossacks to kill Roosevelt with. I've already counted our units up and we have enough which is why I presented the plan above. And don't be ignorant living in fantasy world: Units will get damaged. The joys of the RNG for ya. We can take him out now. Do it before I have a coronary. It will speed up when we finish the game. I've done this before, this doomsday scenario you keep presenting to delay is far-fetched and paranoid at best. Press the Red Button! 25 turns... tick tock!

EDIT: Up north you'll need 2 subs with 6 nukes to hit the northern cities: Ningbo, Angle, Tianjin, Chengdu, Guangzhou, then Macau. Kaifeng can get hit from Beijing, and Uzbek can get hit from Kaifeng. I'd still build an ICBM just in case we miss something - worse come to worse we use it for the islands.

 

[Xcalibrator]

Calm yourself, my good man. I'll go after Gandhi as you wish. But you're still thinking that we need cossacks to do everything. The rapidly increasing number of SAMIs will in fact do most of the work (since most cities are coastal), leaving the cossacks to charge inland. I can always double-nuke a city if it looks like we'll be short on units or he has a big group. I may not make a lot of progess tonight but the weekend is pretty open. We will finish. There'll probably even be time to hand off to you for the finale.

 

[Backwards Logic]

Oh sure, leave me the island hopping campaign . For taking out Roosevelt, I'm not looking at it as SAM vs Cossacks for him. I'm just looking at total number of units, and freeing all of those troops stacked for Gandhi is 12 (I went and counted) more that we can use for 3 of Roosevelt's cities (figure a garrison of four). That's pretty darn significant if you ask me. But I'm glad you'll nuke him now . In fact I wouldn't worry about a garrison-short term - we can always add one later for the islands. Whatever it takes to keep the most units going forward please do.

For your SAM's, as most have been drafted and have 1 xp, what promo line you thinking when we cross that bridge? I'd probably use the first promo we get for pinch for the +25% vs Gunpowder. I'd say go for Amphibious first, but that's two promos away (Combat II the Amphibious) and the +25% from pinch will come sooner.

EDIT: Why is Newsheep making a Bank? Aren't we at the 'blow things up' phase of the game ?

 

[Xcalibrator]

Yeah, pinch. Though I'll probably give a few units Medic1 when needed.

The Newsheep bank is because we get all those free specs (merchants) from the forest preserves whether we want them or not--might as well make the most of them. After the bank is done I'll get back to weapons.

 

[Xcalibrator]

Only played 2 turns (to 1916) because I wanted to do things carefully. So you've thoroughly explored what happens with nuking, eh BL? I was surprised to learn that fallout tiles use up all (?) your movement, at least when there are no roads. Can you please fill me in on the details? We got lucky with both Bombsaway and Delhi in that there was a conveniently placed fallout-free tile to attack from. (I loaded a bunch of junky units onto a transport by Delhi, too, just in case.)

Anyway, Gandhi is dead and we got around 200 gold from his captured cities. Our 3 subs will be ready next turn with 9 nukes and our transports are nearly fully loaded with lots and lots of units--I haven't moved most of them them yet. I've already dumped 8 in China to take Xian. We'll have Democracy in 2 turns and have 5 turns left in the GA. I'm not sure if we want to bother with teching Ecology. It'll take around 8 turns taking into account the end of the GA and we only have enough workers to clean up India. The alternative is to build up lots of gold to buy stuff under universal suffrage. I favor the latter. What about you? I also favor staying in Nationhood even though we may only be able to draft from Seaside for awhile, until we get more happiness resources hooked up and/or turn up the culture slider. The extra 2 happies are good to have since we're near the cap in several places.

I'll make better progress tomorrow.

 

[Backwards Logic]

Yay! Gandhi's dead!

I thought that was common knowledge about the fallout and the loss of movement... So yea, they suck up 2 movement points if you move into them . They also provide 1/2 unhealthiness point to the city per fallout in the city's radius and subtract 3 food, hammers, and commerce from the tile while having the nasty side effect of removing the flood plain overlay from RS desert tiles. Nothing you can do about that though.

Go save money and buy stuff, but tech it off anyway at 0%. There's a chance tiles we'll want hooked up (ie resources) will be buried under fallout. Probably stay in Nationalism simply because the upkeep cost is nothing versus Bureaucracy at a high cost. Right now we just about break even between the two, but our empire is going to grow quickly so Nationalism will in the not-so-distant future end up saving us more money than Bureau would bring in.

I might consider building a worker or two in the core cities to get the new resources hooked up. Both the silk and wheat would come in handy. Plus improving the new tiles we can work would be a help. It's not crucial as (duh) we need more Cossacks p) but they'd certainly come in handy.

I assume you know to not have any units in Roosevelt's borders when we declare war, right? And for nuking Xian, staging the units where you currently have them probably isn't the nest idea, unless of course it's for LoS reasons.

You didn't by any chance notice when most of the barb's cities went to around 1 pop did you? That I'm curious about...

Keep going! 23 turns

 

[Xcalibrator]

1920. Roosevelt is dead. I was delayed because he captured another city (Hangzhou) from Mao and I had to get some units up there. I still attacked all 8 cities the same turn and we lost 2 SAMIs. Uh, little unavoidable hiccup: You can't nuke friendly units or territory. In this case, Churchill had a unit in Chicago and both Hangzhou and Xian had Chinese territory in the 9-tile fallout region. Nothing to do but declare war on both of them.

I'm taking a little break here and will play again tonight so please comment. I've moved very few units since the attacks ended--advice would be welcome. Unless Mao's borders pop again we should have our canal city up north next turn. We have 7 Tnukes left and are cranking them out at a good pace. It's too bad we have to defend against Churchill (and Mao) early but we have lots of ships to bottle them up so it should be OK. Churchill gets RR in 2, Mao gets Steam Power in 13, DeG Steel in 12. Mao is down to 10 cities so he'll be easier now. I uploaded the save because I like the graphs.

 

[Backwards Logic]

I see why you stopped...

First point: Why on earth did you not finish Broadway? There was a very good reason I had it being built, and given your excessive drafting across the board and the war weariness piling up it was bound to come in handy. I'll be honest, I'm a little peeved this wasn't finished. I told you happiness was going to be an issue...

Rush-buy Jails across the board now since we're in US, ie: stop everything for a turn to get them done. It'll fix some but of our unhappiness issues but certainly not all of it. Killing Mao asap to wipe out the Emancipation issues would come in handy as well. I wouldn't even 'stage' everything to hit him in one shot. Once we got troops anywhere to hit any of his cities start taking them out to start subtracting some unhappiness from Emancipation. The lower his Emancipated pop is compared to our un-Emancipated pop the better the unhappiness penalty will be for us.

The Mao declaration was going to be a given, but I don't understand why you didn't wait a turn on the one city with one of Churchill's units in it. You could have nuked the rest of them and left the one island city - surely it wouldn't have been an issue had we left it a turn. Oh well, what's done is done.

Nothing to do but keep plowing ahead. And my laptop has suffered a catastrophic video card meltdown so posting and viewing saves from here on out is not going to be up to my usual post-as-soon-as-you-post standards.

EDIT: DeGaulle will trade wines for ivory, and it appears next turn the WW from Roosevelt will disappear. Once the trade is done, re-adjust every city's tiles (should be good for two happiness everywhere) then when the WW is gone re-adjust them again so we're working the hammer heavy tiles or food tiles to stop the starving. Oh yea, and in case you weren't aware you cannot rebase nukes to subs in the field - they have to be in port and manually loaded.

 

[Xcalibrator]

Fret not. We'll be fine on happiness. I didn't wait on Chicago because taking 2 turns to finish off Roose would give him a chance to trade away Assembly Line for help. We do not want anybody else with Infantry! No, I won't wait to do Mao all at once. Trust me.

 

[CommandoBob]

Yes, the charts do look very nice. Very nice indeed!

 

[Xcalibrator]

Things are fine but I had less time tonight than I'd hoped. Still wrapping up 1921.

 

[Xcalibrator]

Halfway thru 1926. Mao is down to 2 cities and we'll have 1 next turn. I've been cleaning up Churchill's islands while I'm at it.

1922--"Radioactive dust fills the skies near Silverton" and we lose a silver mine. Something similar happened somewhere else later.
1924--Churchill had a 16-stack next to Shanghai so I waited, hoping he'd take the city and then I could nuke it. No luck, so I nuked it twice the next turn to kill 19 Chinese and English units.
1925--we got the NY dyes and took Beijing.
1926--The barbs caputre Washington. I've been leaving some cities undefended because the AI can't get to them any more. I'm fine with the barbs--less city maintenance.

I've deleted some obsolete units (frigates, galleons) that we don't need any more. I've bought very few things using US just in case we can't keep up with maintenance but we're fine so far. Mao will be dead soon so we'll buy back a few happiness from WW and Emancipation. I'll play more later tonight.

 

[Xcalibrator]

Played a little more before dinner. Halfway through 1927, Mao is dead. Churchill has something like 13 cities left but his days are numbered. I think another 10 or dozen turns ought to wrap up the game. We got Hangzhou's incense and will have sugar island's sugar in a few turns (cities already taken). The gems by Boston (?) are unfortunately radioactive. Those redcoats are tough, but pretty much all Churchill's cities are coastal or nearly so, and now that Mao is dead I can bring up quite a few units that were defending his cities from counterattacks. DeG will be a pushover.

I may play some more tonight but my plan is to take tomorrow off and finish, or leave a few turns for BL if I have to quit before it's done--gotta lotta stuff around the house I didn't get to this weekend for some reason. BL, how much time will you have tomorrow, say after 3pm (and remember we can submit until 6 a.m. Tuesday)?

 

[Backwards Logic]

I'd be able to play, but I'd strongly prefer you finish up seeing as you're a little more knowledgeable of each unit's move and why each unit has moved to where it is, if that makes sense. I'll be around though if you aren't able and need me to finish as a last resort.

 

[Xcalibrator]

OK, I'll finish tomorrow. Looks like another half dozen turns. I uploaded the save (1929). Looks neck and neck with Unusual Suspects! Churchill is down to 6 cities, all mainland, and DeGaulle has 5 total. I haven't declared on him yet but am tempted--very tempted. Eh, will probably wait a bit. I just splurged on US rushing about 4 nukes so we'll have all we need (+ 1 extra) when a few cities finish building the old fashioned way in 2 or 3 turns. It's just a matter of moving everything around now. Did I say 30 turns from 1909? Posh! 1935, give or take.