[SPOILERS] Nyles Standish goes full retard

[NylesStandish]

In my ripping off of Shakespeare I neglected to give a precise description of the positions of the enemy forces:




The 5 knights and a catapult move to the hill 1SE of Plako's main stack Turn 144.

Turn 144:

"We are going to make America Babylon America Babylon great again. You know, we don't win anymore. Babylon used to have the #1 GDP in the world. Now, who's winning? The Dutch are winning. The Russians are winning. The Chinese, well, the Chinese were doing pretty good for a while. Going through a bit of a rough patch.

The Germans are taking over. When they send their people over, they're not sending their best. They're sending rapists, murderers, knights. Some of them, I assume, are good people. Probably not though.

What are we going to do? We are going to Build. A. Wall."







That's pretty much all that happened this turn. Whipped a wall and a couple more longbowmen.

The reason the wall wasn't whipped in advance of the German arrival at the city is due to a bad assumption I made. My plan was to let Plako bombard down the cultural defenses of Babylon, then whip the walls and have the defensive bonus shoot back up to 50% and force him to spend some more turns bombarding. That would give me time to whip out at least one more unit before he attacked and to get more fortify bonus on the units with incomplete fortify bonuses.

Turn 145:




I log in to this, to find that the first round of the Battle of Babylon had commenced a turn earlier than I had anticipated. Apparently, since I let the cultural bonuses get bombarded down, the walls I just built aren't worth jack shit right now. Plako sent his stack in. I got a little less fortify bonus than I would have otherwise, but his Knights on the southwest hill had to cross the river to participate in the attack.




Total death toll:

Babylonian:

2 catapults
1 horse archer
9 longbowmen
3 spearmen
2 crossbowmen

German:

7 catapults
4 knights
5 horse archers
2 crossbowmen
1 axeman
1 swordsman

I got a Great General, and I'm not sure exactly what to do with him. I'm definitely attaching him to units, of course. However, a lot of my units have experience from the battle that they can't spend before the end of the turn, and can't be spent before Plako attacks again without double moving.




On the other hand, units which get experience from a GG are able to spend that immediately. If I for example, move my 3 longbows (which have 9, 5 and 5 XP) and 1 crossbow (which has 5 XP), all of which are City Garrison I and began the turn with 3 XP, and attach the GG to one of them, thus giving them all 5 more XP, will the bows which all have 10 XP or more able to upgrade once, twice, or not at all before the end of the turn? Do I only get the promotion for hitting 10 XP this turn from GG XP and the promotion for getting 5 XP from battle XP next turn, or both immediately once I cross 10 XP with GG experience, or neither until next turn?




In other news: half dead Horse Archer reaches the Netherlands, who, as I mentioned earlier, is winning:




Tao seems to have bounced back much bettter than CH after their initial clash. They've made peace, letting Tao focus on getting as far ahead as possible:




The number 1 guy just got the Taj golden age. Let's look at how demos shifted from last turn:

[NylesStandish]

On the other hand, units which get experience from a GG are able to spend that immediately. If I for example, move my 3 longbows (which have 9, 5 and 5 XP) and 1 crossbow (which has 5 XP), all of which are City Garrison I and began the turn with 3 XP, and attach the GG to one of them, thus giving them all 5 more XP, will the bows which all have 10 XP or more able to upgrade once, twice, or not at all before the end of the turn? Do I only get the promotion for hitting 10 XP this turn from GG XP and the promotion for getting 5 XP from battle XP next turn, or both immediately once I cross 10 XP with GG experience, or neither until next turn?

I tried this out by using worldbuilder to spawn units, attacking to get unspendable experience on my units, adding units to the stack until there are 20 (so each unit gets 1 XP), spawning a great general then leading a unit. Units that get XP from a GG appear to be able to upgrade, even if the experience doesn't put them over the next level threshold. Maceman has 3 xp, can't upgade, gets 1 from GG, can upgrade immediately. Unless the rules are different for multiplayer for some reason, this is very good news.

This means I can get 4 City Garisson III bows, or throw the cats at Plako and get 2XP and upgrades for every unit in the stack, combat II + formation for all my spears, City Garrison II for all bows and one City Garrison III longbow. Leaning towards the latter.

[Old Harry]

at channelling Trump.

That xp idea is a good one I haven't seen before, although quite often I take 99% battles with 4xp units without taking the 2xp promo so they can take both straight away when they hit 5xp.

[NylesStandish]

Turn 145 (cont):




Threw the cats at Plako. One of them survived. Not shown: 2 Spears, a Xbow and a Longbow are protecting him, are unlikely to be immediately attacked by Plako's damaged stack, and can join the defense of Babylon next turn.




After attaching the GG, everything is well upgraded. All but one of the spears will be at full health after the turn rolls, the city garrison 3 longbow will as well, the other bows will have nearly full health.

[NylesStandish]

at channelling Trump.

That xp idea is a good one I haven't seen before, although quite often I take 99% battles with 4xp units without taking the 2xp promo so they can take both straight away when they hit 5xp.

Surprised I was able to come up with something people hadn't seen before

[NylesStandish]

Turn 146:




My stack of relief forces gets wiped out. 2 Longbows, 2 spears and a damaged catapult for a catapult and 2 horse archers.




While I lost the reinforcements, my Galley prevailed against overwhelming odds and killed Plako's Trireme, being left with .1 hp. That spear is on the tile where I disembarked the Horse Archer the galley was carrying so he wouldn't sink with the galley if the trireme killed it.




Tao hiding his power level. Tao has muskets, but Toivala, just across the border from Serdoa's Mogor the Ogre is stocked only with bows.

Also, I turned up the espionage slider. Going to get graphs on everyone, and by everyone, I mean Borsche, Yuri and Serdoa. Yuri's in both vassalage and theocracy, so he's got to be building up military to attack somebody. Maybe Plako? Plako's committed a lot of forces to taking me out, and Yuri's chariot was there to see all of Plako's men go over the border into Babylon.

Calling it now: Yuri attacks Plako.

[NylesStandish]

Calling it now: Yuri attacks Plako.

Didn't even need to wait until the next turn to find out I was wrong.

Pretty dumb call anyway.

"Should I attack the guy with a massive military who I'm trading with or some other guy I'm not trading with?"

Don't actually know how big Borsche's military is but it's probably nowhere near Plako's in terms of size, considering Plako's power on the graph is nearly the same as REM's. I don't think Yuri's power was super high when I lost graphs, so if he's attacking Borsche, Borsche's power is probably somewhat less. Will know in a couple of turns when I get graphs.

[NylesStandish]

This will probably be either my last or second last actual report, since I'm about to get eliminated

Turn 147:




Injured Knights continue to heal up on the hill outside Babylon. More Knights continue to be sent to the border.

Turn 148:




The previously mentioned Knights move in to join the main stack. Meanwhile, more Longbows stream into Akkad.




I also notice my GG Maceman from the first wave of the battle has no name, and appropriately christened him Henry V.

Turn 149:




Two Plako's stacks are finally ready to duke it out slaughter the defenders of Babylon. I whip a final spear and nothing else because I only have one pop available and no hammers into anything else.

Turn 150:




The defenders take 5 Knights and all of the attacking catapults with them.

Turn 151:




From here on out, my plan was to concentrate defense on Akkad. I also had an Engineer specialist assigned in Basra that was, combined with the Great Prophet points from Moai, going to give me a 50% or so odds Great Engineer, which I would have used to bulb Engingeering, and then use my gold to upgrade all of my spears to pikes, then hold out as long as possible. As you'll see shortly, Plako wasn't going to let that happen.

Turn 152:




I finally gaze eyes on REM's capital and finally a remark GermanJoey made in one of the RtR threads has context:

EDIT: Also, no way I'm going to play a game with a pre-placed capital. Moving should always be an option, to troll the mapmakers at the very least.

I totally agree, which is why if I'm spending tons of hours on a map I'd like to make sure the game isn't ruined from T0 just because one or two people accidentally got a 4-food + gold capital and most others did not simply because the former guys' scouts were had a clear path to the super-site, and the latter guys had a random hill or tree in the way. It's a totally fucking stupid way to decide a game that you plan to play for a year.

This capital is a fucking beast. Wet corn, wet wheat, grass pigs (not revealed yet), and 2 golds. We never had a fucking chance.

Also, Tao killed the lucky galley

Turn 153:




Plako only has a couple of catapults immediately available to bombard Akkad, so he's splitting off some Knights to attack my backline cities which he correctly assumes are lightly defended, if at all. In doing so he foils my whole plan to bulb Engineering and squeeze out a few extra turns of survival.

Tao immediately asked for peace the turn after he killed the galley.

Turn 154:




Tikrit falls without a fight, and Basra doesn't have enough defenders to have a realistic chance.




The only way this would ever have been accepted is via a misclick. Trying in vain to save that potential GE.

Turn 155:




Basra falls, and with it three German Knights. Maceman and Longbowman take out another Knight and rescue the workers.




Here comes the coup de grace.

Turn 156:




Akkad has 2 turns left at this point.

Turn 157:




The workers commit mass suicide.




After throwing all 2 of my catapults at the stack, I brought a few of the Knights' health down slightly.

At this point, I make a stupid decision in similar vein to the earlier blunder I had against Elkad: I run the stack away instead of staying and fighting. The hill bonus replaces the fortify bonus for the spears, but the Longbows lose their substantial City Garrison bonuses. The spear combat strength is unchanged but longbow combat strength is degraded.




I thought that, even though Plako's knights would be able to chase the stack down, I would still perform better than if I stayed due to the avoidance of collateral from the catapults, except...

Turn 158:




Plako has Engineering, so after taking Akkad his entire stack can chase me down. There were no Babylonian survivors.




3 Knights, 5 Catapults and a Horse Archer for my entire stack of 20+ units.

Turn 159:




Possibly my last turn. He probably has enough Knights to rush in and kill me immediately next turn.

[Rowain]

Thanks for your reports and for making plako work hard for your land