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[E. Albright]

That's fine. Whenever you're ready. Back online, BTW.

[E. Albright]

On the plus side, the delay means the open & closed beta are on the same version again. I don't think there was anything that would have impacted our game, but there were a few versions where there were core engine changes with no base-game patch released, so I was kinda nervous something weird might happen.

[Il Palazzo]

Spoiler: oof (click to show/hide)

Also, four leaders KIA, because apparently somebody's got enough oomph in their nukes now to one-shot an entire battalion. :/

Like, what am I even supposed to do here.
Even the regular un-bombed troops have suddenly forgotten how to fight.

[E. Albright]

Take solace in the fact that my nuclear usage isn't sustainable. I need to start saving them for special occasions instead of using them every turn; I wanna say I burnt at least 100 radioactives last turn, and probably closer to 150.

Also, of curiosity: did I manage to sneak the Mk II Victims Advocates onto the field w/o you noticing? That would explain why those 4 HQ units were close enough that adding one hex of range let me hit them w/o putting the launchers on the front line...

Re: the unbombed units: when an OHQ is destroyed, its subordinates are (obviously) out of range of the HQ and no longer benefit from the commanders' bonuses, which in your case are overwhelmingly strong (and the reason my on-paper-superior troops have been getting their faces eaten; your start-of-turn numbers are higher than any I've seen, but the casualties-inflicted-to-sustained ratio looks very normal to me). They also lose their posture.

[Il Palazzo]

I didn't think they'd be that effective, tbh. 1500 battledress infantry and 50 quality APCs in an HQ evaporated in one shot was a bit of a lolwut moment.
At least Astro Chambers 'survived the destruction of a unit'. What a guy, that one.

And ugh, not much solace there. With radioactives being essentially an unlimited resource that you'll only ever get more of as your industry continues to develop, I don't see how I can hold any sort of a frontline now. You only need one shot per turn to liquefy even the strongest defences and push forward at your leisure. At the same time, I'm still at least 10 turns away from fielding even the most basic nukes.

I'm not seeing any viable avenues for victory right now. The one hope I had until recently was to get close enough to your capital for artillery range, and hobble your centralised economy with a massive barrage. As far as I can tell, you'll only ever get more ahead in all metrics. It's just a matter of time before ICMBs start falling on my capital.
I don't think Karlito - being even less technologically advanced - can flip the balance here. Assuming he'd stop sitting on his arse and buying into your propaganda, the cheeky bugger.

But I've only just opened the turn, and am reeling from the 50 megatons in my face. Let me mull over it some more. The doom and gloom may soon pass.

[E. Albright]

There's a couple of mechanical things about the success of my 10MT nukes that I don't wanna get into b/c it'd undermine said success, but I can talk about them later.

And right now I'll flatly admit that the reason I've had as many rads as I have is b/c of that mine 'o mine, not demetalization. It'll be a LONG time before I can match that assets' income, and its lifespan is very limited.

Karlito taking your side against me would just ensure your victory. Your industrial economy is scary, and your high-Commercial, high-Meritocracy commanders are demons from Hell. I'd never played that profile combo before but for various reasons have been playing it a lot in single-player. Cooptation alone is something vile I'd never realized existed; 5PP for 15pts of War, Int, and Cha is wild, and definitely worth the effort to get Commercial that high. The only reason you haven't overrun me is b/c like a good little centralized bureaucracy, I've been throwing bodies into the meat grinder turn after turn.

[Il Palazzo]

Cooption alone is something vile I'd never realized existed; 5PP for 15pts of War, Int, and Cha is wild, and definitely worth the effort to get Commercial that high.

A what now?

[E. Albright]

Huh. It's your Meritocracy & Mind that've been that high, so I guess you don't have Co-optation after all. It's, uh, wild. REALLY disgusting. Makes all the sacrifices high Commercial demands of you worth it if you're a fan of pampering your leaders. Lemme see if I can find a bug report save where I've got the card unspent - I don't have many autosaves where I've got one b/c it's so cheap to play. Here we go:

Spoiler: Co-opted by the Elite (click to show/hide)

[Il Palazzo]

Never seen that before. Has it always been there, or is it from a recent patch? It's possible I've just never pushed commerce that far.


I'm working on the turn, but incrementally. Not gonna finish today.

As for my commanders, I really don't see anything extraordinary with this profile. I'm pretty much only using the hire military stratagem - because not having the democracy bonuses I can't afford hiring talents or seniors - and the distribution of shit to alright to good ones seems almost normal, somewhat skewed towards turds. The few excellent ones you see are a select bunch, usually with lots of experience (and often on the brink of retirement).
Other than the +25 command rolls, I can only see one feat supposedly improving leader capability at meritocracy 90+, but I haven't been able to get there (nor do I know what it actually does).
Unless you know something about the mechanics that I don't. Maybe they gain experience faster?

And btw, my mind is going. A couple recent events with 'would you like to improve fist or fist?' choices have messed up my pretty profile.


Also, I've noticed there's a @front column in the textual battle report now. Not sure if it helps me understand the results better.

[E. Albright]

It's always been there. It's pretty easy to not go deep in Commerce. You need 80+ and happy factions to get that card.

Higher Meritocracy means your random leaders are generally higher Capability. When I've gone heavier on Democracy than Meritocracy, I've still tended to lean very heavily on Recruit Talent b/c Rec Civ/Mil tends towards Is and IIs. With high Meritocracy, IIIs and a few IIs is more the norm. Now, if you want higher skill levels immediately, you still need to spend more, but higher Meritocracy = better leaders to the point where hiring Juniors is viable if you have some time to develop them. I can't remember where I "learned" this from (forums, maybe?), but my experience bears it out.

I've never really used the text battle reports so IDK what's going on there.

My favorite type of bad profile choice is "Pay a bunch to tank your preferred profile and have something bad happen, or don't tank it and have something horrible happen". In my current SP game, I've had 18 of one particular decision of that sort in the first 55 turns. Hopefully that specific choice will get tuned down to a tolerable level soon.

[Il Palazzo]

Alright, enough vacillating. Turn incoming in half an hour-ish. Unless it crashes on resolution. Please don't crash.

I suppose I owe you two some sort of an explanation for the delay. It's kinda mundane. Some health-related problems cropped up before Christmas, and when I even could think straight my mind was not exactly on the game.
Not sure if that's all cleared up yet, though. So slower pace would be welcome.

ed: oh, wow. 13 minutes. The algorithm must have received a proper update during the pause.

[E. Albright]

Yeah, Vic's talked about engine speed improvements in a number of the recent updates.

No worries about delays. They happen, it's fine. One good thing about the delay was that a couple of CTDs during turn processing were introduced but then fixed.

Fair warning, Karlito: I'm not gonna rush to get my turn done. While this was a comparatively mild turn for me with roughly equal casualties-inflicted-to-sustained, it's still gonna be a lot of unpleasant decisions, especially since it kinda looks like you're succumbing to IP's honeyed words about how weak they are even as they're on the verge of capturing one of my cities and have lost absolutely no territory since the start of the war.

[Il Palazzo]

Yes, yes. And Hitler was on the verge of winning in '43.

[Karlito]

Yeah, Vic's talked about engine speed improvements in a number of the recent updates.

No worries about delays. They happen, it's fine. One good thing about the delay was that a couple of CTDs during turn processing were introduced but then fixed.

Fair warning, Karlito: I'm not gonna rush to get my turn done. While this was a comparatively mild turn for me with roughly equal casualties-inflicted-to-sustained, it's still gonna be a lot of unpleasant decisions, especially since it kinda looks like you're succumbing to IP's honeyed words about how weak they are even as they're on the verge of capturing one of my cities and have lost absolutely no territory since the start of the war.

You can't be in too much trouble as long as you continue to expand in the south.

[E. Albright]

I can, actually. A handful of brigades of last-gen infantry (most are in heavy combat armor, and their support is almost entirely obsolete anti-tank guns) can hold & push back Hornstein, but they'd make very little difference on the meat grinder front line up north. My entire southern army has manning levels comparable to some northern Corps. The units that are making any headway in either direction are customized mechanized brigades, augmented battledressed infantry corps, missile-and-rocket-armed air wings, and atomics.

(And let's not forget that my alternative to pushing forward against Hornstein is to keep a comparable number of troops perpetually in place to hold them at a stalemate while they inflict continual casualties on the troops holding the lines through sheer weight of massed numbers. Aside from letting me pick favorable battles, attacking rather than defending means they're suffering their postures' defense penalties rather than benefiting from their attack bonuses, as they're almost all on things like Charge and All Out Attack...)