Turn 245: 1275 AD

[vmxa1]

If no settlers were on transports and if they could not put any on this turn, they could be eliminated with th elose of Abilene.

If we do not know that, then we can investigate the city. In that case, no need to take on the ships. Do we have enough between us and GoW to do it?

I did not take a count of what is on hand and how many blitz runs we will get.

[DeepO]

Some last notes before closing the game:

I don't think we should attack right now. We need to clean up all what we can reach of course, including the 2 barbs ( I'd use a tank on the first one, hope for a promotion, and send it to the damaged Lego tank right after that (it will be elite for sure, possibly GL opportunity).

Further, we attack the 10 leftover infs and 2 T. Not that they are a risk, but we can use some force clipping (we've got too much of them right now, they're costing too much). This will also deny GoW a chance to attack something else.

Navy: We get one safe chainer in position. Further, we move our transports so that we can attack Abilene from the sea next turn (lots of marines doing nothing).

We also start looking for the sub taking out the Nina

We start bombing Abilene, and wait for GoW to help. Size 6 is best, size 2 is perfect. We need to get the barracks and possible walls destroyed.

We protect the radar tower (nothing fancy, only a sea-based landing can damage it), and protect our road access from NI to the RR network (mainly from bombardment).

We block access to Vox. This for two purposes: Lego can hide and repair there, so we need to keep them out of their former lands. (enough slaves to create a fortress and radar tower). Further, we don't want Vox to nose around in our new territory.

Last point: we look for a good spot to settle near the dyes, so we have the lux next turn. We also give a dye to GoW. This can only happen in case we've got an open connection to Vox, and Lego can block that I think. Let's not give them any ideas.

That's about it. I'll leave this here to think on, look at comments, and play the game either later tonight or tomorrow around noon GMT. For now, I'm exiting the save. I had to debug windows 10 minutes ago (thanks to Visual studio being installed, I can catch about 75% of all windows crashes... "on error resume next" works nearly always ), so I've got to restart anyway.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Originally posted by vmxa1
I am not sure Coastal Batts do anythign vs humans. I think they prevent the AI from bombarding the city and maybe its tiles. The AI must target it first.

I've read some reports on this, and thought they don't help at all... which makes civil defenses worth it to build, but not coastal fortresses.

I had done a scouting with an explorer at no movement cost to see if I could find the 5 captured arties (missed them).

As you can see, I used workers (some idea). Zargon made a comment, saying that they are no-one's arties anymore, suggesting that they were abandoned. However, that still leaves those 2 missing ones. Are they in Vox, on a transport, or... did he teleport them to Abilene? I doubt vondrack would be doing this, I don't know Zargon's playing style.

Teleportation was ruled out, right?

So basically Lego can only draft two units. We do not need to investigate as we know what they have and any not found in the open are in the city. We did know they had none in transports, did we not?

That doesn't mean they are still all on land. But I agree that investigation would cost too much to be of any use. We can use that money elsewhere.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Originally posted by vmxa1
If no settlers were on transports and if they could not put any on this turn, they could be eliminated with th elose of Abilene.

I doubt that very much. Abilene could only build 1 settler (and maybe even didn't, the loss of pop could be drafting). They had 4 cities, and needed 1 to break into the build queue... the other 3 built a settler. Jackson was not connected to the RR network, but might have been the first city in the row. Both Castlea and Dye had access to Vox.

Add to this that Lego did attack a GoW unit blocking the isthmus, and there is a very good chance that we will find settlers outside of Abilene. The only option to find 3 settlers in Abilene would be teleportation.

If we do not know that, then we can investigate the city. In that case, no need to take on the ships. Do we have enough between us and GoW to do it?

You mean taking out the ships, or taking out Abilene? I'm not sure, but I don't think we can do it in 1 turn. We can use some 60 tanks (~10 damaged), and some 40 marines, with only 8 arties and a fighter support. GoW has 36 healthy tanks, plus some damaged ones and a couple of cavs and riders. They also have ~ 50 arties. That might be enough to take out 64 I, and 8 T (most damaged), but I'm not sure it will be enough for sure.

It would be worth calculating, and if feasable going for it... GoW should be able to destroy the Lego barracks, so any leftover 1/4 I shouldn't restore to full health next turn.

OTOH, if we wait one more turn, all the damaged tanks (ours, GoW's and Lego's) can heal. I'm not sure what option is best.

I did not take a count of what is on hand and how many blitz runs we will get.

no blitzes... Lego is 2 tiles away from any of our positions.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Hmm.... something I failed to notice so far: GoW already has dyes. Port sacrifice is covering a connected source.

DeepO

[DeepO]

And something else: we can use our MI to attack Abilene if we want to better our odds. However, they won't get through for sure (we can only make it easier for GoW), so they might be better served to protect us

DeepO

[DeepO]

Come to think of it: in case we could take Abilene, and Lego still has some settlers inside Vox or on transports, can we ask them to quit immediately? they can hide settlers on transports near indefinately, but it would only be pure harrassment of an already lost game.

I know, they can whine and say they'd just be using a game mechanic, like we've used another mechanic, but I would really hate it if the game would end like that. We have always played fair, to my knowledge.

Thinking a bit more on this, why did Lego keep 7 transports? They still had 14 left at the end of last turn, why abandon 7?

One explanation is that 1 transport was destroyed because of lack of funds (I doubt it, they should have had enough cash left for one turn upkeep), and 6 more were used to rush a battleship in Abilene for next turn (25 shields per transport, 150 shields added to the queue). Or, 7 were scrapped (175 shields). But why build a BB? Any other build only requires 4 transports, so where did the other 2 or 3 go to?

Hmmm... this is smelling fishy... I've got to think about this a bit more.

DeepO

[Aeson]

If Lego wants to sail and hide I think it's perfectly valid for them to do so. (I also have no qualms about fighting "fake" wars to get out of Mobilization if they do so.) We can find them pretty quickly. I think stealing plans gets less and less expensive the fewer the units Lego has. Not sure though.

If we really need to get out of Mobilization and don't want a fake war we can kill off Vox. I'm sure GoW would go along with it in that situation too. So if we haven't found Lego by the time we want to exit Mobilization, it's some leverage we could use on Vox to help us find Lego, and possibly on Lego to just give it up.

[DeepO]

okay. So we're missing 2 or 3 transports. If they were in reach of Abilene, it would be better to stock them there, because there might be an opportunity to scrap them next turn. Otherwise they wouldn't disband them, and keep 7 others floating, even if they are out of position.

So those 7 transports, where are they now? Last turn, we guessed at them being either on the South of Legoland, or in the inner sea. If they were in the inner sea, they are toast for sure, and may be better destroyed before GoW gets a shot at them. That could explain the 2-3 or 7 transports we miss. Even if they could escape (GoW is not blocking the 1-tile passage, for all we know), they can't do anything useful for Lego anymore, and only cost money.

If they were in the South, they can either be stocked in Abilene for rushing next turn, or maybe they were used to transport the Dye troops to Abilene.

Whereever those transports are, they are prime candidates to load a couple of settlers.

7 transports left... and only 3 settlers. Those transports in the South (if they were there, of course), could also get the troops in Dye fields (at least 10 infs are missing as well, they are either in Vox, or on transport). Are we looking at a possible invasion force?

-----

Why the 10 arts left? That doesn't make sense either. We don't know about the 8 arts in Abilene, but there is no evidence they bombed us (we wouldn't know, we would have healed before we got our turn. All units in NI stayed put) There is no evidence they bombed GoW either (we can't spot it). And there is counterevidence: Lego didn't report them shelling us, while they did report the bomber hitting us.

So... can we assume there are no more artillery in Abilene? otherwise, there is no reason not to use them, even if it was to bomb the 2/5 GoW tank in reach.

Where did they go to?

No artillery could have entered the city, or it had to be by boat, with the transports within reach of Abilene. (assuming no teleportation, of course). Only the arties from Dye could be moved around on the RR network, possibly escaping to Vox. But why would they then disband their arties in Abilene?

This is all getting very strange. I change my position, maybe we should investigate Abilene. I see one very good reason not to leave 8 arties in the city, and that is that Lego might be certain that the city could be taken. We might need to do the math ourselves to check.

In that case, 10 arties are either in Vox, or on transports.

Hmmm... there is one possibility left for the missing transports: GoW destroyed them while taking cities. But they didn't mention it in their report... MZ has been very thorough in these.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Aeson
If Lego wants to sail and hide I think it's perfectly valid for them to do so. (I also have no qualms about fighting "fake" wars to get out of Mobilization if they do so.)

If they go that road, and argue that they are allowed to do so, fake wars are definately in. But it still keeps our WW increasing. When the Bobian war ended, we were all very civilized in ending it quickly, to avoid ww issues. I would really hate the gme degrading to something like this.

We can find them pretty quickly.

I'm not sure... unless we steal plans

I think stealing plans gets less and less expensive the fewer the units Lego has. Not sure though.

Ah, of course. One second...

currently, stealing plans costs us 2588g safely, 1294 g immediately. After Abilene, it would be even less expensive.

BTW, investigating Abilene is 124 g.

If we really need to get out of Mobilization and don't want a fake war we can kill off Vox. I'm sure GoW would go along with it in that situation too. So if we haven't found Lego by the time we want to exit Mobilization, it's some leverage we could use on Vox to help us find Lego, and possibly on Lego to just give it up.

Interesting point: if Lego is hiding within Vox, they certainly will know it. A threat can go a very long way... however it would also destroy any hope of a good relation with them, so we should use this with extreme care.

DeepO

[DeepO]

I'm off for dinner, and will restart my pc in the mean time. Will check in later

DeepO

[Aeson]

I thought there wasn't any negative WW in PBEM, only positive? Also, WW points don't accumulate unless you are losing cities, units, or have units in enemy territory. So if Lego just floats around the poles it won't get any worse if that's all that's happening.

-------------

Lego has 11 Tanks, 4 of which we can see. Only one of them can be in Abilene. That leaves at least 6 which have been loaded into Transports or are in Vox territory.

[Aeson]

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3acad_war_weariness.shtml

[Jon Shafer]

There was definitely WW in the ISDG1.

I don't believe there's WW in this game.

The differences may be due to the games starting under different patches. During the war against RP GOW never seemed to suffer a bit of war weariness when they clearly should have. However, I don't know for sure whether there's WW in this game or not.

[DeepO]

it might not get any worse, but we're suffering from ww. All our cities are affected, we lost numerous WTLKDs, and I think the situation got worse in Typhoon. We did lose 1 lux at the same time, of course, so I can't remember for certain how much we lost because of that. Building a city near the dyes should bring us back to WLTKD everywhere in case there is no negative ww.

positive ww is very certain: ending the war with GoW brought our happiness levels down.

Thanks for the documentation Aeson. I'll read it now.

DeepO