The shogun strikes back!

[RRRaskolnikov]

Hi team,

Again, good round Rolo, the situation is really nice now
About the rants: 1) fully agree, 2) I think Sun Tzu was produced during my last round (and I spoke about him), but we apparently failed to decide anything about him . Shyuhe should settle him or make a medic for another stack... or some other thing, it doesn't matter much now...

I thnk there are several valid path:
1. Go for Ramses, after having vassalized Charly.
2. Go for Shaka then Ramses, after having vassalized Charly.
3. Vassalize Charly, gift back cities, military techs, repeat the process for Shaka, Ramses (the quickest path to victory imo)...
4. Or finish Charly, then grab egyptians cities until domination...

I think 3. is the more fun but we need to abandon the shrine... let see what the team wants

We can redirect our EPs points toward Shaka and Ramses (or only Ramses) as they are the remaining threats.

Roster duty:

Rolo -> had fun against HAs and maces (good catch )
Shyuhe -> new shogun!
Paulus -> next shogun!

Cheers,
Raskolnikov

 

[shyuhe]

I'll wait for team input before proceeding. I don't care going either way - it's just a matter of slogging through the wars necessary to finish the game. Vassaling HRE + kiling Ramesses will probably let us win via AP, which is the fastest I think.

 

[r_rolo1]

IMHO option 4

 

[Diamondeye]

I mirror Rolo's sentiment.

 

[shyuhe]

Well, the people who responded advocated option 4, so I proceeded to hit enter. And learned that the cowardly HRE had vassalized. To the mother (father?) of all evils - Egypt. At first, I thought WTH. Then I looked at Shaka's diplo screen and realized that Ramesses is the #1 in power, not Shaka (Shaka said he'd love to take peace but we'd have to contact Ramesses). So.... not so good.

Well, I first went about mopping up HRE's leftover cities before he got rifles (which he got super fast thanks to his master).

This of course came at a price. The Egyptian forces snuck in from the west and took Ulm. The Ulm garrison had set forth north after healing to take another HRE city. It was probably a good thing that they weren't there to defend as the enemy's sporting rifles versus our sea of mustkets.

Egypt quickly laid siege to Aachen:

So I sent Scipio (a nearly born GG) to the frontlines to lead the troops in defense. He died, but it was not in vain as the city held:

We've broken Ramesses's biggest stack, but our modern forces are too few to press on. The northern garrison has healed and is ready to press on once we upgrade a few muskets to rifles for city garrison duty. We can't upgrade the whole stack as it'll cost a whopping 4200 gold.

I teched constitution to enable jails - we're going to be at war for a very very long time I think. Gilgamesh still won't trade military science to us That would really turn the tide of war in our favor with grenadiers, but alas. I've been drafting troops around the empire to protect our cities. Good thing draft rifles with 0XP are still combat 1, drill 1, and CG1! I was surprised that Aachen held against that massive Egyptian stack but attacking across the river into protective rifles and muskets helped.

I'll pass on the save here to the next player. There's a mini-stack forming near Prague. Once it gets 4-5 more rifles, I'd send it south to deal with HRE's other mainland city. The offshore island is annoying - I don't think we can attack it until we get grenadiers. Research is currently set for steel. Yes he has cavalry running around, but cannons are the fastest way of taking down city garrisons in this era. Just protect them with enough rifles and it should be fine.

Sun Tzu is still chilling down south. We may want to send him to near the frontlines in case we need to do another emergency promotion vs. Egyptian forces. Or we can settle him somewhere or wait for military science.

 

[r_rolo1]

Ok, this looks like a nice showcase of agg/pro gunpowder units in action

So, we need to regroup and stem Ramesses out. IMHO the first thing to do is to finish that coward Burger King to clean our western city of that stinky yellow culture. Than we need to proceed with the main dish , the surprisingy war-nerd Ramesses

So, I propose to play defense in the west until Uzbek and that island city are no longer in Charlie hands.

 

[Sweetacshon]

I vote for option.. oh wait... I missed the vote. Oh well. Nice warring, peeps. I agree with rolo: let Rammy break on our protective bullets while we regather forces including cannon. Do we still have a heap of EP on HRE that we could steal techs with? (haven't checked the save closely)

 

[PaulusIII]

Urgh... so I have to defend???

Another warring set wasted!

btw. got it.

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

First, sorry guys for the lacking input for myself this week end, I got trapped into the hof...
... but nice warring indeed Shyuhe...

I agree with Rolo and Sweetacshon, we should defend against the egyptians while trying to grab Uzbek. The island city is really annoying... perhaps Charly will break free again when is done to this one
Nice to see Ramses taking war seriously

Roster duty:

Shyuhe -> holding the front
Paulus -> up for more fights!
Ras -> on deck!

 

[PaulusIII]

Well... Ramesses played along nicely with a world descended in the insanity of war in the last few sets, didn't he? As commendable as his ways are in spirit, they are sadly devoid of any thought on Ramesses' behalf. Any schmuck with some production capacity and enough men stupid enough to die in a far away land can build an army nowadays. All we Japanese professionals in the noble Art of War can do is teach him the basic fundamentals of military strategy. For as much as Ramesses has certainly tried to take on the mighty Japanese war machine, he has also failed dismally. And with a lot of pointless Egyptian deaths as well.

I have studied the attacks of the Egyptians, and intend to present them to our officers-in-training as cases you should not attempt to emulate.

Exhibit 1: Failing to notice when perseverance is not a virtue.

In this case, I present to you the Battle of the Aachen Grasslands. At the Shogun Change, Ramesses had a stack of several riflemen heading for Aachen. After he was outflanked at first and lost several of these while the Japanese suffered only losses that could be recovered soon, he pressed on and crossed the river nonetheless. While the last stand of their knights will go down in history, the Egyptians were butchered and not one of them survived.

Exhibit 2: Failing to notice that better weapons do not necessarily imply victory.

I now present the Second Battle of Florence, in which one of the largest Egyptian armies ever fielded faced off against the Japanese Army at Florence. Whereas the Japanese were mostly outdated troops armed with muskets or even katanas, the Egyptian fielded only modern rifles.

Yet, the Egyptians were slaughtered in the attack because Japanese draftees with outdated weapons can outperform the Egyptian rifles. The Egyptians should really put more care in their training regime - they could learn from ours. No matter how many times you have marched up and down the square - it's no substitute for REAL training.

He was willing to take peace after these fiascos. I refused him, of course.


I've also made two trades: One to Pericles, Rifling for Corporation. Bad guys already have Rifling and Corp might be a boost to the economy.

Second: RP to Shaka for a lot of cash. This one might be a bit odd... but it came with a nice perk since he's Friendly now and willing to trade again. And I wanted the cash to upgrade some cannons at the front.

I ended with the capture of Uzbek. I'm sorry, but I had to wait for cannons with these CG3 rifles he was fielding. I would just have suicided trebuchets on it and we'd still not have busted them, evidenced as I still lost some cannons. We have it now, however.

Only Luxemburg remains for the HRE now. Man is that going to be a deathtrap for us.

And then there is of course the obligatory 'DENIED' reel of demands I refused. Pericles was the main culprit in this set as he wanted us to give him Rifling for free and cease all trading with the not-so-vile-as-we-thought Zulu. Both were of course refused.

 

[shyuhe]

And you were complaining about the defensive war.

We'll need frigates to take down the 40% of Luxembourg. Then we'll just have to suicide lots of grenadiers to finish him off. Annoying, but not much we can do about it now that he's a vassal of the evil Egyptians.

 

[r_rolo1]

God bless the mindless AI attacks

Charlie can be left for training, the big prize is Ramesses....

BTW, no AP vote? In 2 sets? Wierd.....

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Nice set Paulus ... and got it!
Will post tomorow about next moves as I need some sleep now, but from the look of things we at least need to decide on a site for IW and next tech(s). Demcraty/physics -> artillery/ or AL path are possibilities (would go artillery myself). I am also not sure that we should stay in nationhood, we got a pretty nice production already, and it's time to grow again if we want to reach AL soon. But perhaps we want to stop research and draft our way to victory with the current techs (after military science) What do you think?

Cheers

 

[shyuhe]

I think we should just go towards AL. We can kill Ramesses with cannons/rifles and the production bonuses from AL will speed it up. We're close to finishing up the game so I think we should just go pure military. Physics would be good for airships but we'd need SM first...

 

[Sweetacshon]

Nicely played! Yeah, I'd think AL and pressing on is the quickest route to victory. Cannon is fine, no need for arty, and physics is too far (probably, but maybe not). Was Rammy at all close to inf? I didn't check.

 

[PaulusIII]

He's no farther from it than we are. Nobody has Steam Power yet and we both have Corp, so I don't think we are much (if at all) behind him. Go AL and conquer the world with Inf.

And Rolo, there might have been (or might not) a religious leader vote. I'm good at ignoring that kind of thing by now

 

[RRRaskolnikov]

Hi guys ,

I am planning on playing my turns tonight, so the plan:

1) Go on with the Egypt conquest
2) Build a couple of boats to kill Charly
3) build the NE in Izumo
4) Start the IW somewhere, Aztec capital gets my vote because there are 2 GG there... but there are also a couple of nice towns so I am OK to build it somewhere else...
5) Civic switchs: none

Thoughts?

Cheers,
Raskolnikov

 

[PaulusIII]

Not really anything to add to that. The game has been moving straightforward for quite some time now, and I don't expect that to change.

 

[shyuhe]

Just keep on mowing them down Once get finish of Charlie, WW should cut in half so it'll be nice. Egypt has the SoZ so we should go after that city first.

 

[Sweetacshon]

Yep, for sure it's straight forward. Extra points if you can come up with something extraordinary. Good point about SoZ, shyuhe.