Pong 3: Turns 176 - 182 of Norway (Nate)

Our game resumes in the Modern Era of 1745 AD, and tensions are high in the Great Sea as decades of diplomacy have failed to slow military escalation in the ocean between Norway and Russia. War is imminent!


Diplomacy has failed, and despite my very sincere offers to remove fleets from the vicinity of Russia, Joe refused to decommission his fleet. At the moment, I don't think he realizes that I have the ability to upgrade all my fleets to battleships, so I'm not sure he realizes how serious my threats are to sink his fleet if he refuses to do it, but he declines. So for the safety of the cities of Farshore and my trading lanes, I have no choice but to attack.

We denounce Russia and move the fleets into safe waters for upgrades. Then I get this message, which momentarily alarms me...

Turn 176- Russia enters Atomic Era

 - until I realize that it's just his runaway culture and not science. Fleets of (3-unit) Frigates are annoying, but hardly a serious threat to all my battleships.

176- Cyrus approves of a strong Norway too

The Great Sea War (1760 AD+)

(i.e. the War of the Great Sea, not the "Great" as in "awesome" sea war. That would be a dumb name.)  

178- Russia declares war on us!

While I wasn't unprepared for his declaring war on me, this wasn't what I expected him to do. He used my denouncement and declared a Liberation War on me. His stacked fleets sailed out against my first wave.

178- The first naval engagement

I intentionally put all my caravels out front on the first wave, trying to conceal the full strength of my navy and battleships until the last possible moment. I realized that I may lose a few caravels this way, but pulling into my fleet felt like the safest way to approach. After all, I only needed one melee unit to survive in order to take St Petersburg, and I have a few scouts lurking about if it comes to it.

178- The results of the opening attack.

At this point, we realized that hybrid turns are somewhat frustrating in two player games. He is player one, which means any war that he initiates will always result in him getting two full rounds of attacks against me before I can respond. While not game-breaking, it is SUPER annoying, so if anyone has advice about a house rule that we can use to mitigate this somehow, I'd love to hear it (comment below).

179- Norway responds

Using my superior mobility, I decided to swing around to his western flank and cut through the line with modern cannons. It took me a few minutes to figure it all out (this was my first real naval battle ever in Civ6), but I was pretty thrilled with the results. His fleets were like butter to my steel ships and cannons.

181- Russian fleets destroyed

181- My eastern privateers coastal raid a farm

I had hoped to gain some gold from this, but I forgot how specialized tiles are in Civ6, so all he gained was "healing," which was basically useless at the moment. He was subsequently attacked and killed soon after.

The Siege of St Petersburg 

182- Norwegian fleets eliminate the city's defenses

3-tile attacks and 70+ strength ranged shots, with bombardment, devastates nearly anything in this era. His capital city's defenses were functionally erased in a single turn.

182- The ground battle

I send a lone scout in to seize the capital. I'd assumed he'd have a strong land army to counter attack, and I didn't want to lose anything important. So Scout Gustav became Governor Gustav. 

182- Broadway grants Flight Eureka

182- Victory

182- Russian capital is occupied

And this is where we ended for the night, so the The Great Sea War is not really over, but it certainly hits a turning point.

Empire Update - Turn 182 (1780 AD) 

Heartland: Scandinavia

Culture (Tourism), Rankings, Score

Tech

Civics

Heartland: Scandinavia (Strategic)

Farshore

Russia

Icestan

World Map in 1780 AD.

What a delightful session. I had sincerely hoped that he would take my offer for peace, so that someone (he) could mobilize against Nubia. I'd imagined that I would start conquering the cities of the East and we'd effectively meet in the middle for a final standoff, but his attack fundamentally changed things, and now I occupy St. Petersburg. I seized a few relics and works of art in the conquest, not to mention three(?) wonders, which will certainly help slow his tourism advance toward the cultural victory now. I'm pretty sure Russia is done now. 

I'm not sure I can stop Nubia from winning now though, and while I'm pretty sure that I will be able to take or severely damage much of Russia, I'm not sure it'll actually help me win. As you can see in the screenshots above, I barely see Nubia, let alone have the means to effectively attack them. It will still take her a little while to complete all three stages of a science victory, but I'm not sure a navy is enough to slow, let alone stop, her. It's very likely to come to nuclear war, if anything, and I'm not even sure I can win that. Her production has been very high the entire game, and she is likely to have every defense available in the game, so it's not like a single nuke is going to be a miracle fix. Worse, if Joe concedes, he'll be able to take over Nubia, putting a far superior intelligence behind her forces.

So my plan at this point is to destroy as much of Russia's forces as I can, and then swing around to take Voronazh and Moscow. If he doesn't quit then, I'll probably just concentrate on keeping people happy long enough to starve him out, while looking for some way, any way, to stop Amanitore in Nubia from winning. It's not over yet!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Game 14 - Gamechat

Image
Pong 14 =============================== Game Settings for Pong 14:  =============================== * Mulligan until Turn 10 (may request any number of restarts) * Draft leader from 3 random (Each player assigned 3 random civs, player chooses one) * No AIs civs * Uses Pong Difficulty Mod * Map: Continents and Islands * Standard Size (8 players) * Standard Sea Level * Disaster level 3 * Timer: Dynamic Turn Timer =============================== Joe 03/12/2020 Session 1 Begins. Turn 1, 4000 BC Horselover Fat 03/12/2020 War has been declared on our extremely good looking and intelligent people Joe 03/12/2020 2740 BC: Sumeria declares warcart on Korea Horselover Fat 03/12/2020 We are so smart, that we fear we might die to their carts pulled by what appear to be giant hairy babies, probably 1 [ 8:42 PM ] Their long ears remind us of when we were all dragons, cum dragons ...
Read more

Pong 8: Nubia

Image
Greetings, and welcome to Pong 8! This time around, my choices from the draft were Nubia, the Netherlands, and Sumeria. I waffled a bit between Nubia and the Netherlands, but ended up going with Nubia. Mostly because of their super-awesome Archers, which are stronger and get an extra move. That third point of movement allows them to move onto forests or hills and still take a shot, which is obscenely powerful if you use it right. The bonus to District production is nice. It's not something you really notice during the game, but it's a constant bonus you'll be using the whole time. I'm not too thrilled with  Nubian Pyramids . They can only be built on deserts, which greatly limits where they can be. They take a shitty tile and make it less shitty if you have districts nearby. The tile yields never really get all that great, and the tile you build them on needs to be worked by a citizen, as opposed to a district that you could drop there and increase ad...
Read more

Pong 5: The Egyptians; People With Animal Heads

Image
For Pong 5 all the players went with random civilizations, and I drew  Egypt . I was hoping for a militaristic civilization after playing an  isolated, island-bound Korea in Pong 4 . I barely fought last game, the majority of my battles were a handful of modern-era naval engagements and  nuking my own territory  to buy myself the handful of turns I needed to make it to Mars. I was hungry for war this time around. While I believe that each civ is what you make of it and that Egypt could be a fine military power with their  Maryannu Chariot Archer , the primary foci of the civ are trade, gold, faith, and district/wonder production. As a self-admitted wonder-spammer, I know before the first turn loads that I'll probably be playing a builder again. Session 1 A pretty decent start. Lots of food, a decent number of hills, and some  Stone  that I can quarry or harvest. My planned build order is still the same, Slinger -> Monum...
Read more