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[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Setting to attacking Ft. Combe and defending Bradford.

Begin Future Planning

[Funk]

Some ideas

Flame throwers?
As we have compressed air we can easily build a flame thrower that uses turpentine or a pitch distillate.
now our would be more on the lines of a simple Hand-held projector
For attacking or defending forts such a weapon is ideal.

Armour?
While a full suit of armour is to heavy to be of use, cavalry could use cuirass and helms

Victoria III Air Rifle
We can probably improve it a little more.

[Baffler]

If we're thinking pie in the sky type stuff observation balloons to use as artillery spotters might be interesting, but I don't really see those justifying their use of a design phase when the crews of the best guns we have can easily see targets at their maximum range.

Other more advanced forms of artillery like howitzers or a 4-6 pound mortar might be a little more useful, or just a lighter gun.

We'll also have to get an actual warship at some point.

[Ukrainian Ranger]

when your artillery has 100m range you need no spotters

We need better artillery, I'd say 12 pounders. Or logistics. Or cavalry weapon. We can't go for one more fancy project and waste a design action like we did even if I'd like to get baloons

[Sheb]

Better artillery, hand grenade, trains...

[Ukrainian Ranger]

Also, lagging behind in navy can create huge problems. Once loyalist finish pirates, we are screwed

[Funk]

If we're thinking pie in the sky type stuff observation balloons to use as artillery spotters might be interesting, but I don't really see those justifying their use of a design phase when the crews of the best guns we have can easily see targets at their maximum range.

Other more advanced forms of artillery like howitzers or a 4-6 pound mortar might be a little more useful, or just a lighter gun.

We'll also have to get an actual warship at some point.

We should work on getting better cannons and by better i mean larger and cheaper.

Trains and steam ships are much easier if we steal the other broken ones first, no one is getting a perfect steam engine first time.
Observation balloons have the problem of how do you commutate with the ground crew? use flags? 

We can probably get 2 designs next turn if one of then is a bigger cannon with no new tech.

What about useing air rifles to fire grenades?

Spoiler: like this samurai gunner? (click to show/hide)

[Sheb]

Actually, I'm going to make a suggestion: we should entirely ignore the naval side.

Now, I know you're going to think I'm bonkers, so let me expand.

1) We don't really need a navy that much.

What is a navy good for? Protect your trade and attack the enemy's, project your land force and keep communication and supply channel open to your oversea possessions. We don't have trade or oversea possessions, and we have an enemy right at hand so we don't need to project your force.

In game terms, a navy would let us attack the Brits and maybe gain a point or two of logistic. But we don't need to attack the Brits, and we can get logistic by other mean (also, I'd guess that sea-based logistic would be susceptible to enemy raiders in a way that a train would not.)

Another benefit would be to prevent the Brits from attacking us, but even if they have total sea superiority, it is going to be impossible for them to make inroad if we focus on land warfare. We can just push them back into the sea.

2) We are unlikely to win the naval game

Unlike us, the loyalists NEED to win on the sea to be able to do anything. That means that they will spend as much design and revision phase as they need to get naval superiority. And since many of those were on my side in the Arstotzka game, I know they have good designers.

So we're facing an enemy willing to throw everything in the naval arms race. But we don't have that luxury, because we are also facing a land enemy.

3) We need to get the Loyalists and Monarchy to fight each other.

There is a good reason Zanze banned any diplomacy. If two sides managed to gang on the third, they're pretty sure to win. However, it's still in our interest to get the Monarchy and Loyalists to fight each others as much as possible. So I say, let us stay out of the naval game, and let them keep fighting on the seas while we take over the Monarchy. We can then crush the loyalists with a continent's worth of ressources.

[Funk]

Sheb your right let focus on getting the weapons to push back any landings.

I'll format up the grenade gun and maybe i'll find some other weapons for us to think about.

[RAM]

If we have no navy at all, then we cannot remove them from our coast. That means that any coastal facilities need enough land-based defence to defeat a whole fleet. Anything that doesn't have heavy coastal fortifications can just be bombarded into rubble. So we are pretty much sacrificing all of our fishing villages, and I have a difficult time believing that we are not dependant upon fishing. It also means that we have a fraction of the naval production capacity, as we can only build in large fortified facilities. Further, they can take their landing craft and just mozy up and down the coast while their warships bombard the response forces that are following them around, they can freely travel over the horizon and come back wherever, they can construct fake ships and just tow them around and we have no way to test them.

As for diplomacy, we could have a navy and be defensive with it or focus on the monarchists. We will be a long-term threat, but they can try to win points against a softer target or defend against an aggressive one. Or we can be an easy target, they can land their invasion anywhere they like, support it with largely invulnerable artillery, and supplying it will be a non-issue. With our weak empire crushed they will have a foothold to destroy the monarchists with their safe offshore holdings and our functional nation.

Also, we really really want a boat that can engage land-forces from a river. We want them in numbers and we want them soon. There is a certain river, if we can take it and hold it, then we can pretty much destroy a large chunk of the monarchist military.

[Wolfhunter107]

To be honest, I think that our first priority should be to get either heavier artillery or a steam engine of some sort.

[Baffler]

Grenades from an air rifle sounds pretty good. Historically grenadiers were a pretty important part of the army, disrupting enemy formations and breaching fortifications, but they had to toss their huge bombs by hand and tended to lose quite a few men in doing so. A hand launcher gives us a good compromise between our huge cannon and our infantry's muskets and rifles.

In the more immediate sense though, artillery is probably the way to go. I'm partial to mortars since they don't need to worry about enemy fortifications and can be sited somewhere the enemy can't easily fire back, but whichever one we do we should try getting something like fragmentation shells with a percussion fuze to go with it.

If we do manage to steal the wagonways, I think we can wait on the steam engine for now. We'll still be beating the monarchists in logistics that way and it doesn't cost a design. Otherwise I don't know.

[Sheb]

Assuming we manage to steal the wagonway, I'd favour something like a rifle grenade for our design phase, and an howitzer for the revision phase.

[Elfeater]

An air rifle grenade could also see use clearing the decks of ships for marines.

[Sheb]

An incendiary version would be a fearsome anti-ship weapon too...