Realms Beyond PBEM7: Part Four: A Total Slugfest

Singaboy:
I am not too sure how exciting this will be with 4 versus 2. Anyway, time to soldier on. The only thing that can keep China and Rome on top of things is the tech edge. The turn starts with the expected situation as China has the situation covered. China requested a coal which Rome gladly send over. Apparently, the frigate was attacked by the English caravel fleet and then the frigate fleet while the armada got promoted (I guessed). Annoyingly too, the barbarian caravel pillaged the lighthouse.

Time to test the water and what do I spot? Both battleships from the south can attack those fleets and armada. If I can rid myself of those highly dangerous units, things should get a lot better.



So, let's attack. Well, even an armada is weak against Rome's unpromoted battleship. The armada is heavily damaged.



The other battleship is going after the frigate fleet in the back. Take this! [This is a great example of the power of having 3 range on battleships.]



This frigate is getting another good shot from the northern battleship and sinks! One down. Next, it's up to two frigates to sink the caravel fleet. This must hurt. In fact, I wonder what war weariness is doing to England, all those sunken ships can't be good for them.



I used the yellow ironclad to make sure, there is no more pesky unit in that bay. It's time to party, is it not?



Well, the main objective of the turn is over, I reckon. However, I also know from Sulla's report, that there are units in the east. Those must be at least 5 frigates and some sea dogs? I do not wish to get any battleship stolen by those sea dogs. That's the biggest fear. I move the northern ironclad east and spot some ships. I know that England can strike with their inflated range of 7/8. There is NO point to sit back and hide. I think, they would come to take out my northern part of the fleet. This means, an all out attack by myself with as many units as possible.



And look at this...that frigate has a support bonus of 4 even though there is only one visible unit next to it. Sea dog alert! I pull in two additional ironclads and two battleships, even with one of them yellow....The rest of the navy can't do anything... Somehow, some attacks screenshots got eaten. Anyway, first the wounded battleship sinks the southernmost healthy frigate, then both ironclads move in to expose two sea dogs. Of course, it would be a couple thanks to Venetian Arsenal. Bad things come in two. Good thing, those battleships have a range of 3 and I sink one sea dog straight away.



Unfortunately, there is no way I can sink the second sea dog. England getting the Arsenal and having Sea dogs is just silly. I decide to attack it to decrease its chances to sink a unit and take it. I also sink that redlined frigate. Less enemy attacks can only be good. That cluster of English units had two GAs [Great Admirals], 8 frigates and 2 sea dogs. This is simply insane. How many units did Sulla destroy? Now, I have taken out 2 fleets, an armada, two frigates and a sea dog and still face stiff opposition. England's turn will be brutal for me. Mind you, his ships are boosted by the GAs, luckily they are all unpromoted.



The tactical overview at the end of the sea battle and some upgrading action. I have now 8 battleships in those waters, of course, being largely scattered. I hope my losses won't be so bad. In fact, I fear I am running out of ironclads which are needed to take English cities, if it ever comes to that. There are 5 additional frigates that can still be upgraded. The builder at Bologna harvested the stone for a privateer. I am hoping to produce a sizeable number of them to be upgraded to submarines. I am really curious where the English fleet will move to. Unless there are more ships arriving in numbers, I am going to smash them with my battleships relentlessly.

Singaboy:
There are currently 10 enemy ships (including one frigate in the fog). Of course, there could be more units to the east, but I somewhat doubt it. England would have used them to sink my remaining ironclad. I will attempt to sink their southern flank in order to expose the Great Admirals and sink as many ships as possible. For this, I might sink the redlined ironclad with a frigate (from the west), then sink the sea dog in the southeast with a new battleship + the privateer from Bologna. With that, I should be able to sink the wounded sea dog and another frigate with the pair of battleships. This gives the redlined ironclad the chance to escape south and heal.

I will then use the remaining three battleships + frigate to clean up as much as possible. I hope to sink 3 sea dogs, 1 ironclad and 2 frigates. This would leave England with 4 frigates. I hope I will shock England sufficiently that they panic. Of course, Woden could decide to simply keep on attacking. However, it would mean the demise of his remaining 4 frigates. I am not too sure how many more ships England can chop with those bare bone cities at the coast. In the meantime, I will add more battleships. I checked the current sea battle tally: It stands at 23 versus 7.



Time for more naval action. I am pretty confident that this part of the world will soon be in Rome's hands as those English coastal cities have chopped pretty much anything that was available. If I can defeat these 10 units, I hope I can then quickly start to raze those cities. Keeping them would only get my happiness to nose dive further. Anyway, time to attempt to sink as many units as possible. First, I bring in the battleship from the south. We start with a good roll and sink the sea dog right away. Great start!



The wounded battleship then takes care of the wounded sea dog (something went wrong with the screenshot, I was too slow). I get one of the western frigates to sink the ironclad which formerly was Roman anyway. In fact, England tried to rob me of two ironclads but only succeeded once.



I bring in my remaining navy to not lose sight of how to attack (and forget a battleship in the south in the process). The plan now is to use two combos of frigate/privateer with a battleship to sink two more vessels. The first unit to go is the last sea dog. While attacking I try to bring the battleships to the front in order to prevent the England ships from attacking my weaker units. Of course, that only works to a limit.



I repeat a similar attack with the privateer and battleship and 1/6 frigates is gone. Then I remember that I still have an additional battleship in the south. With two attacks from battleships I manage to sink the 2/6 frigate.



How does the battlefield look like after the latest round of attacks? Well, there are now 4 English frigates left. In the meantime, Rome added two more battleships to the mix. You can also see a caravel that's traveling back from the northeast. I need that unit to raze enemy cities. Unless England got a lot more naval units, the plan is to to start roaming the coast east of Bologna preparing to raze Midway and Jutland. Those are useless chop sites. East of that is the Great Lighthouse city which I will gladly keep. I am hoping that this will draw Nubia units east so that we can start the land war in 6 turns with tanks. Of course, all this action will be bloody and I am not too sure how both England and Rome can survive this without cities going to be very unhappy. The unit count stands at 29-7.



Let's have a look at war weariness. Wow, this is pretty bad, isn't it. -21 so far. If you think, this is bad, one got to wonder how awful it must be for England with unit losses four times as much. Maybe we can see soon rebels popping up in English territory. This makes me remember war weariness free governments in Civ 3 fondly. How to fight a prolonged modern war in MP? I check Rome's amenities and they got a lot of them. However, the sugar deal with China has expired again. Rome sends a request for sugar to China.

Singaboy:
This turn was played with the patch in place with quite an impact. Before I do anything at sea, I get the battleship to defeat that pesky musketman. In the screenshot, you can also see that some privateers are close to completion. This will give me the Eureka for submarines which should be researched in 3 turns after combustion. 4 turns until we have tanks. This will be vital. Now, what do I spot? The nationalism bug is fixed. This is a great thing but it comes a little late. We got nationalism on T147. Those few turns could have made some difference with fleets in play. Anyway, it is never too late. There is a catch though. If you combine two units, you won't get an accumulation of experience. The fleet or corps will simply take on the higher experience of both, while health is being averaged out. This means, that preferably, I should combine unpromoted with promoted units.



Have a look at the strength difference here. You can see a normal unit at Bologna and a first fleet made up of a promoted and unpromoted unit. The standard unit would inflict an average of 88 damage in this case. The fleet however does 131 damage, an increase of 43. This makes a huge difference, whether you can sink/defeat a unit with one shot or not. On a cluttered battlefield such as the area around Napoli and Acre, that can make the difference between winning and losing. I proceed to combine three unpromoted with 3 promoted battleships to get 3 fleets. This in fact improves the gpt [gold per turn income] as unit maintenance drops. Unfortunately, there are only promoted knights that can be combined to tank corps later on. No new knights anywhere in sight. No builders to magically chop them.



I sent four battleship in the direction of the caravel that was sunk by England and spot the remainder of the former England fleet. This is an opportunity not to be missed (and later badly regretted) as I sink 2/4 frigates with double shots. I feel that Rome is getting on top of things (how stupid of me).



Let's have a look at the power ratings: England which suffered 31 ship losses still has a power of 1900. This is simply insane. Actually when starting the game, I assumed it to have a lot less water. One ridiculous game decided primarily by the Venetian Arsenal was enough, but now we got potentially another. Amazingly here, China has the highest power rating with plenty of units that still need upgrading, particularly the navy in the west. Germany has upgraded their ships to ironclads and frigates there. That has resulted in a drop in gpt for them too. Woden's Nubia has a scary power rating as well with GG [Great General] boosted cavalry and field cannons. I can only hope, that we can hold Nubia off until the arrival of tanks. With tank corps, we could steamroll them I hope.

Singaboy:
The save arrived just before leaving for work and I could not resist to open it to see how many units China has lost to Nubia's attack. But....no attack by Nubia at all. This will cost him as I can now combine my many cavalry and field cannons to corps making them much stronger. Nubia has not reached Nationalism at the moment. Then I check the Ocean and 1/4 battleships in the north has been sunk, while another has been wounded. This can only be due to a lot more English ships there. The power rating has jumped back to 2200, simply ridiculous. It feels like playing space invaders where wave after wave of enemy troops are thrown at you regardless of your military prowess. Top that with the insane war weariness model for modern units and I feel what Sulla must have felt a few turns earlier.

Of course, Rome is by no means defeated. The question here is, what's the point of playing a game which is so lopsided due to ONE wonder. China's ability to build such nice wonders doesn't really matter. Naval units are way superior to land units due to the fact, that they do not have to fight with terrain movement rules that make land units crawl about. No, ships can move 6-8 tiles in one turn, they can destroy walls without the help of super slow battering rams or entirely useless catapults or bombards. In all seriousness, what on earth were the designers of this game thinking?

Singaboy:
So, here is China's T151: The shocking news first. I thought, I had England's navy on their knees on this side of the world, but they somehow got even more frigates and managed to sink one of the battleships. In hindsight, it might have been better to combined 4 ships into 2 fleets and then chase the English. Well, I seriously didn't think they had more units arriving from the north. Rome will have 2 fleets able to sail northeast and shoot those offenders as well as using the existing 3 battleships (2 of them can attack while one is used to form a fleet). I am guessing that England has maybe 4-6 frigates up there. I should be able to sink at least 3 of them if not more. I simply have to continue to chase them as long as Rome has the tech advantage.

The sea battle that simply cannot be won against the Arsenal. I bring in all I have and attack all the way:



After all attacks, there is a mere frigate left for England. Since I know England doesn't even suffer from war weariness much, this will not do a thing to them. People in SP [Single Player] complain how weak England is, but in a multiplayer game with Oceans, they will win if they can net the Arsenal. PBEM4 was lost for Archduke merely due to him not getting the Arsenal (besides having a weak ally). This is seriously sick.

Singaboy:
T153 (Rome): The situation that I knew via the Chinese at the sea is as follows: England has formed a sea dog armada and was able to steal one of my battleship fleets. That hurts. What are the odds of that. Anyway, this means he used the second last GA to form an armada. Luckily I still have sufficient naval units in the area though this loss hurts. I start by eliminating the heavily wounded battleship with a privateer.



When moving my units closer to the English, more ships pop up. How many units can this rubbish wonder / chopping nonsense produce. All coastal cities look so barren already. Well, let the sinking continue. I attack the frigate covering the GA so we can removed that bonus. Battleship fleets prove essential for this with one shot kills.



I move in a normal battleship to teleport the GA to Lepanto. The sunken frigate still received the GA bonus as the GA sits in the harbor that is merely two tiles away.



While attacking, I am trying to keep the fleet as close together as possible as I might expect more attacks, though even England has to run out of ships one day. The fourth ship and last visible frigate sinks. It then takes two battleship attacks to sink the sea dog armada. Well, it did a fine job of stealing a battleship fleet, so most likely it was worth forming it. I still have two ships ready to attack, but the battleship is enough to sink that last visible unit here. The good thing here is that Rome's ships earned a lot of promotions which can make them stronger and heal them next turn (unless more nonsense shows up).



The situation at the end of a somewhat satisfying 'Rome against a billion'. I am hoping not to get into counterattacks this time and then advance on Lepanto first. It will take both ironclads (btw the extra healing of the GS [Great Scientist] seems still in effect) two turns to be able to conquer Lepanto. I will use some shots next turn to soften up the city and then take it hopefully on T155. I could then take Valletta a turn after (that city is in fact pretty nice and would benefit us immediately since its a CS [city state]). After that, the question will be whether to turn the fleet around to sail to German waters or so simply hang on here and remove every single English coastal city. Mind you, that in two turns Combustion will be done (Sulla, the archeologist still takes 5 turns and I can't afford to wait that long). Electricity will be done after this (4 turns) to get to submarines and then I would head to infantry etc. The kill count stands at 42-9.

Tanks come in two turns and I requested the one oil source from China as China can immediately connect their second source the turn it gets combustion itself. I am not sure how viable it is to get 20 privateers as it takes a long time for each city to produce them. I now have 4 privateers, this is really slow going. By the way, the moment frigates became obsolete, the production in Firenze was reset. It would take 18 turns for a battleship. yeah right.