Moments where you've just survived by the skin of your teeth

[Noname117]

So this thread is for those times in the game where everything is going horrendously and somehow you barely scrape by with either losses which aren't severe or maybe even with a minor victory (Can be both individual battles or entire wars).



In the "entire war" department, I'm playing a "non battleship" save of Austria Hungary, and got into a war against Italy, who has battleships, in 1905. The best I had were fast and well-armed armored cruisers, which still couldn't really fight a 12" armed pre-dreadnought. And thus I got myself into a situation where I was blockaded with no real ability to break it.
Realizing that I had larger and faster crusiers than Italy, I made the tactical error of putting them all on raider duty. 2 light cruisers got interned and 1 of my weakest armored cruisers struck a mine and sank, although Italy lost 3 light cruisers trying to fight them. But the real error here was that in the few months I did it unrest increased by a fair deal. I had probably just made Italy's blockade stronger, and thus I stopped the strategy and went back to trying to get victories in cruiser battles.
But the damage was done. Unrest was rising. I had to get out of this war quickly or risk losing a really heavy and expensive armored cruiser or two, or maybe even my first battlecruiser if the war ended at the wrong point in time.
I spent 3 prestige in events trying to get the war to end, to no avail.
My unrest climbed to 8, then 9. A mutiny was controlled. People demanded food. It climbed to 10.
I decided to pick the middle option with the government opting for peace event. And we got out of the war having given up only minor concessions, when our government was likely a month away from collapse.



So what are times where you guys have been in situations you've barely made it through?

[garrisonchisholm]

I'd say my Russia game fits that bill. (Jan 5th posting)

nws-online.proboards.com/thread/1012/garrisons-games-archive?page=2

Executive Summary, "won" war with England And Germany thanks solely to events in the final 2 months of the game.

As for smaller moments, I will always remember the Japan game where a night action went badly (maybe it would be a shorter list to document night actions that went well?...) and my new battlecruiser was limping home with torpedo damage. I kept slowing the ship to try to reduce the flooding, and eventually was creeping along at 5 knots. The flotation damage kept rising though, and when it finally reached 100% I was crushed. The ship however kept on. ...6 HOURS on, finally entering port. The ship was listed as having Sunk in port, but I was delighted to see the game was smart enough to show it as only 5-months damaged on the master list. She got her crew home, and in my mind's eye quietly settled with a sigh as the last of the wounded disembarked.

[ikahime]

Cruiser engagement, one of my tiny CLs lost it's single fire director. Rather than running, I decided to close the gap to a range where direct fire would make up for the loss of accuracy.

A brutal close range gunfight ensues, and they manage to take out my engines leaving us dead in the water, but my CLs pack efficient firepower into tiny packages, and in a few minutes the enemy (A commerce raider with a bunch of 4inchers) sinks beneath the waves, as my damage control teams restore power and limp away.

[Airy W]

It's hard to be proud of running away but when it's five battleships vs. one I'm damn proud to run away without losing one ship!



I got close because I knew that my lone battleship I had a 3 knot speed advantage over the slow German battleships with their 19 knot speed. But then they damage my hull with a hit at 12,000 yards.  This slowed me to 18 knots. So now it's 7:10 AM on a sunny day, I'm slower then the Germans and I'm 8 hours away from port. The Germans were a bit spread out which meant I was only in a duel with one battleship at first but they started concentrating their armored cruisers so I told my own armored cruisers to form a rearguard. After a 2 hour duel at long range, my CAs managed to damage the lead enemy CA enough to make it give up the chase.(I was surprised to learn flooded on it's way home 5 hours later).

[Airy W]

And I got a prestige point out of it!