[SPOILERS] Nyles Standish goes full retard

[NylesStandish]

Turn 127:




It was foolish to think I could hold a first-ring enemy city with just 2 horse archers.




The Battle of Hunters in gif form.

Turn 128:




Watch that Galley, it's kind of important.




Everything that was 1NE of Hunters moves into the city, and everything that was in the city fortifies.




I send out a Chariot to scout and find Elkad's stack.




Once I saw the stack, I realized that Elkad could not only kill my chariot with nearly 0 risk, he could move his whole stack (mostly swords and catapults at this point) to a tile with 75% defensive bonus next to a city. I move some units out of Hunters to both protect the chariot and delay any enemy movement towards Hunters. He'll either have to move to the plains forest tile 1W of Hunters with a 50% defensive bonus or wait a turn to move to the tile 1S of Hunters, which also has a 75% defensive bonus.

Turn 129:




Elkad's stack becomes more formidable.




I move my units back into the city.




It's about this time that I realize REM's attacking Elkad, too.

Turn 130:




Remember that galley? I loaded it with 2 of the horse archers in that stack of 3 I had running in the direction of Fallujah. The take Tarnsman. I immediately burn it so that neither REM or Elkad can benefit from its (re)capture.







This is where I truly go full retard. I did not notice the workers in Elkad's stack until the next turn after I got fucked by Elkad's attack and looked back through my screenshots to see how his units could have hit me. My intention was to abandon the city, then re-capture and raze it, then re-found later. I wasn't getting any defensive bonus from the city, and Elkad had a lot of highly promoted swords and a lot of catapults and axes that could be promoted to city raider. In my mind, the city was somewhat of a liability at this point.

Since I didn't notice the workers in Elkad's stack, I wrongly expected that his stack would not be able to attack mine immediately after he retook the city. Thanks to my blunder, Elkad got to attack me on flat ground instead of in the city with the +25% defensive bonus of the hill. By staying in the city, I expose myself to +20% from city raider promotions (neglecting the few highly promoted swords) but gain the hill bonus and at least +5% fortify.




Also here. I notice that Plako has a stack of Horse Archers coming my way. Not only does the stupidity of my attack on Elkad after making an enemy of Plako in the east become apparent, but what do I do when faced with a stack of 19 horse archers? Obviously I prechop the forest next to Ramadi to remove the +50% defensive bonus!

Except HAs don't receive defensive bonuses. And there's 19 of them. And Plako is going to finish a road 1S of the stone next turn. So I lose 2 workers for nothing.

Will finish the rest of the gap between T130 and now tomorrow when I'm less drun

[NylesStandish]

Turn 131:




Elkad retakes the city I very very stupidly abandoned and kills a lot of shit. I counterattack, and in total Elkad loses 22 units and I lose 15.




Stacks looked like this afterward.




On the other front, Plako's massive stack of Horse Archers cannot be stopped from taking Ramadi. Monument seen being produced was not built, I just whipped a bunch of shit to kill the citizens and stack unhappiness. Plako's one-movers move towards Nineveh.

Turn 132:




More carnage in the west.




Ramadi falls, the one mover stack moves next to Nineveh, and I throw a couple of catapults at the stack to little effect.




Having not looked at the diplo screen with Elkad in a while or looked in close detail at civstats recently, I didn't know how quickly REM was taking over.

This invasion was REALLY stupid. Tactical blunders aside, it was stupid to attack in the first place. I even realized that this exact situation was possible before I attacked (emphasis added):

I asked for a peace treaty [with Plako]. I hadn't founded city #9 in order to put more resources towards military, so I guess I do that now and figure out what to do next. Attacking Elkad while he's fighting REM in the west could go well or backfire depending on which side of his empire he focuses defense on. Attacking Plako again seems suicidal. If I go attacking Elkad, Plako could just hit me when the enforced peace is up if he chooses.

As you can see, he focused defense on the guy who actually attacked him first (imagine that) . So I've basically taken Elkad and myself out of the game at this point. I wasn't remotely likely to win with my 9 cities (which is why I felt I needed to attack somebody), but I could have at least held on a little bit longer. I could have built a bunch of quays and been raking in the commerce in my 5 coastal cities. I could have waited for Engineering and tried to put a stack of one-movers and trebuchets on the hill next to Hamburg. Elkad couldn't have attacked me without causing what happened to happen (REM taking all his shit). I could have teched and tried to settle some of those islands.

I feel pretty bad for wrecking Elkad's game. I also feel like a douche for a couple of comments I made about Elkad over some minor worker micro mistakes Elkad made earlier (some squatting fortified workers). It was just like "wtf is he doing", pretty tame compared to some of the things people say about each other on here, but I feel stupid, having made way more and bigger mistakes this game, to have said that. Elkad played much better than I did this game; his empire had way more potential than mine when I attacked.

And in return for backstabbing, I got less than nothing. I get what I deserve.




Not going down without a fight, though. I whipped up a huge crop of bowmen in the hopes they would turn to longbows.

Turn 133:




They turned to Crossbows instead. Oh well.




Plako begins bombarding the defenses down.




The remnants of my western army underscore how poorly managed the invasion was.

Turn 134:




Plako bombards the defenses some more, and I chop some forests so that I can get some use about them before I die.




The order of battle. Heinz Guderian lent some of his experience to two crossbows and a catapult (which got Barrage II and then was suicided). If I had attached Guderian to the Bowman with only the 2 crossbows on the square with him, 2 units would have got 7 XP and one would have gotten 6, meaning 2 more City Garrison III bows. That probably would have been better than an extra level of barrage on a suicide cat. The catapult visible in this screenshot also gets suicided before end of turn.

Turn 135:




The city inevitably falls.




Plako also got relatively good dice rolls, IIRC, but I don't have screens of all of the battle logs.




Also, I meet Borsche and see that he has joined in the dogpile I inadvertently started.

[NylesStandish]

Turn 136:




Plako moves all his damaged Horse Archers into Nineveh.




Elkad's super-elite soldiers cluster in defense of Hunters.




In other news, I meet Serdoa this turn. I notice he has extra dyes and offer a trade so I can get more happiness for more whips.




I also offer a similar trade to Borsche for the same reason. Serdoa ended up taking the offer while Borsche declined.

Turn 137:




Whipping everything everywhere forever.

Also, I got graphs on TaoTao this turn. Selective graph dump:
















The effects of the wars and Plako's golden age can clearly be seen from the graphs. Tao and REM are the clear front runners. REM will probably edge ahead in GNP, crops and MFG when he consolidates his massive gains but Tao has a massive edge in culture. CH going to attack somebody.

Unfortunately, no screens of the stack Plako split off from Nineveh to attack Mosul. It was defended by a Longbow, a Crossbow, a Warrior and freshly whipped walls. Plako's stack was mostly horse archers, a couple of catapults, a few axes, crossbows, spears etc. Killed a few, but ultimately lost the city. Focusing defenses on Babylon and Akkad.

Turn 138:




The aftermath of the fall of Mosul. Note that Plako has Knights now. I threw a Trebuchet at Nineveh and did a little damage.

Turn 139:




Plako begins the march on Babylon.




CH gone to war with Tao.

Turn 140:




Plako staying put for now. Waiting for more reinforcements and healing a bit. He's got two more catapults in Nineveh. I've a lot of Longbows to deal with, and in a city on a hill to boot, so he's gonna want a few more cats.




Snooping around REM's land. He's got a city bordering Borsche completely undefended. REM's forces are formidable both on paper and in real life, but he's got a lot of land to defend and consequently he's spread pretty thin.

[NylesStandish]

Turn 141:




Apparently I was wrong about who declared on who. I don't check the event log often enough. That means that either CH's buildup is defensive or Tao's declaration was preemptive. If I'm reading civstats correctly, CH took a city off Tao while CH hasn't lost anything.




Reinforcements streaming in for Plako. He's got another catapult in Nineveh and one more knight in his stack than last turn.

Yuri's chariot has been sitting there spectating since at least T140, so I offered him Open Borders so he can have front row seats to my demise.

My galley is loaded with a Horse Archer and might be able to get a lucky dice roll somewhere. My other 2 horse archers moved to that tile above the ice forest. They can hit Mosul next turn, and Plako can't see them unless he moves units onto one of the hills. I expect him to wait at least one more turn for the 2 catapults and 1 knight coming to join the stack before moving onto the hill south of Babylon, and he won't likely move anything to the other hill that has sight on the 2 HAs, so they'll probably be able to get to Mosul without any more defenders moving in. Retaking Mosul would be a minor annoyance if pulled off, and I can't raze it since I founded it, but he'd have to divert a few HAs and/or Knights to deal with it, which might delay the main attack and give me more time to prepare and make this whole thing as bloody as possible.

Turned science to 0. Gonna save up gold until all of my obsolete units are repaired or I die, and then start on Engineering again.




Also revolted to Hereditary Rule and Vassalage. I should have done this as soon as I got Feudalism. All of the Longbows and crossbows I have would have been able to go City Garrison II right out of the gate, all the spears would be Combat II + Formation, all the catapults Barrage II and the happiness problem from whipping is almost completely solved with Hereditary Rule.

[NylesStandish]

Turn 142:




Got this gift of whales from REM, my sole reward for participating in the goring of... Gor. Who is now completely gored.

I, for one, welcome our new muffin overlords




The magic of Hereditary Rule. I can pretty much whip indefinitely without any happiness consequences now.




More knights. Yuri refused open borders, as you can see, and his chariot is still hanging around. I've got at least 25 defenders in Babylon, and many more that can reach it next turn.




REM's got to be loving the graphs right now. His biggest competition in this hempisphere is taking some serious damage. Plako's power level is nothing to sneer at, but he's got to finish me off before he's any threat to REM. The graphs also suggest a Tao/REM war around the time of my attack on Plako, meaning REM is probably close enough to Tao and CH to capitalize on the power vacuum left by the annihilation of their forces.




I wonder what Barteq's up to ...

[Elkad]

Why is Elkad wasting worker turns?

I had been assuming that the upright workers with the white circles had just done nothing and skipped turn. Apparently, you can fortify or assign worker actions after the worker does his turn of work and get the same effect. I didn't think of this at first since I never do this normally and I don't think there's any benefit to this practice other than hiding what action the worker is doing from opponents.

It's not that uncommon to cancel worker actions... you can hide what they're doing from your opponents, like you said, but its also useful for making sure that they won't auto-start an action at the start of your next turn, just in case you want them to do something else.

GJ got it. I was cancelling actions both to hide them from you, and to make sure they didn't auto-waste a turn when they needed to run instead.

There's another post in there where I had 2 workers on hills (apparently doing nothing). Your chariot could hit either, I had a spear you couldn't see (on the roaded-since-you-saw-it-last rice I think), but I could only cover one of them. I had a reason for moving the south one and not the north. I don't remember what it was, but I remember thinking about it. Likely because if your chariot had captured the south worker, it would have seen something from that hill it couldn't see from the north one.

The chariot threatening Captive killed at low odds for Elkad. Even if my chariot had survived, taking Captive wouldn't have been a guarantee, but it would have been better odds for me to win than Elkad's chariot had to beat my chariot.

I was surprised it was even there, that entire area was my culture on my screen. I had to check the culture overview to see that tile was actually neutral. Display bug.

Nomads understandably spite whipped. Since you can only whip up to half of city size, he must have whipped twice. The upside is that 2 of the 9 or so whips I saw from him on civstats won't translate into units coming my way.

Actually, I fumbled that whip. Inserted defender, whipped. Realized I'd shift-clicked it to the end instead of control-clicking it to the top, and had whipped the forge to completion instead. Had to rearrange and whip again.

Watch that Galley, it's kind of important.

I was, as soon as I could see it.

It's about this time that I realize REM's attacking Elkad, too.

I had hopes he'd get in a war to his south. I saw your stack when my chariot went through, got nervous when I realized you had peace with Plako and turned it around. I started moving my stacks to the border with you a couple turns before you declared (except my spears). I didn't see your stack, but the chariot had Sentry, so I knew it wasn't in the tile where I'd seen it just a couple turns before, so it had to be moving towards me.

Remember that galley? I loaded it with 2 of the horse archers in that stack of 3 I had running in the direction of Fallujah. They take Tarnsman. I immediately burn it so that neither REM or Elkad can benefit from its (re)capture.

I'd been watching your galley, realized it could fork Tarns and the recaptured Nomad, whipped the xbow out in Tarns. And then forgot about the galley next turn. So I moved the crossbow. I realized my mistake about 2 seconds later

Had I left the crossbow there and held the city, I would have turned a big chunk of my stack around to stop REM from taking my capital (with Academy) (he was 2t away I think). Since you burned it, there was nothing to save, so they were free to continue on to kill you.

This is where I truly go full retard. I did not notice the workers in Elkad's stack until the next turn...

That was planned. Well, not you missing them, but the fact that my stack could chase you down if I included them.

I thought I had a decent trading partner in you. We were even enough I knew a war would likely result in both of us losing, so I was happy to trade with you and worry about REM. Until I moved that chariot through your land, I had no idea how cramped you were. I was worried about 4 neighbors (3 after Commodore got steamrolled, but my west and south borders were gigantic), and you only had 2 (and no way out).

Anyway, thanks for the fun.

[NylesStandish]

I'd been watching your galley, realized it could fork Tarns and the recaptured Nomad, whipped the xbow out in Tarns. And then forgot about the galley next turn. So I moved the crossbow. I realized my mistake about 2 seconds later

Had I left the crossbow there and held the city, I would have turned a big chunk of my stack around to stop REM from taking my capital (with Academy) (he was 2t away I think). Since you burned it, there was nothing to save, so they were free to continue on to kill you.

Yeah, I was really surprised to find Tarnsman with a single defender. I assumed you'd either whip out a Trireme or an extra defender and completely neutralize the attack, but figured it was worth a shot anyway. It makes sense now hearing it was kind of a misclick.

If you had left the Crossbow there, you'd have definitely held the city against my attack, but not against REM. I dug through my screenshots and found this one which I didn't include in my report:




He had 11 HAs and 1 City Raider III Morale Axeman 1t away, not 2t. REM would have taken it, and I couldn't hold it from either of you with a single damaged Horse Archer.

That was planned. Well, not you missing them, but the fact that my stack could chase you down if I included them.

I thought I had a decent trading partner in you. We were even enough I knew a war would likely result in both of us losing, so I was happy to trade with you and worry about REM. Until I moved that chariot through your land, I had no idea how cramped you were. I was worried about 4 neighbors (3 after Commodore got steamrolled, but my west and south borders were gigantic), and you only had 2 (and no way out).

Anyway, thanks for the fun.

That was a great move, bringing the workers.

I feel like my crampedness was largely my fault, due to expanding slowly and focusing excessively on military. Plako's location for Hamburg took a lot of land I think Brick intended to be in my "natural territory" so to speak, and I didn't punish that pink dot when I had the chance. I had expected to eventually found a city either 1NW of where Hunters ended up or on that same tile, but never did due to focusing resources on invading Plako. However, even with those extra few cities I would still end up well below average. I think CH has the least cities of anybody I have contact with currently, at 12 or so.

I was really surprised at the amount of land to your southeast. Even though it came at the cost of more neighbors, I was super jealous when I saw it all.

If I had any success against Plako, there's no way I would have attacked you. That was purely a desperation move.

I really appreciate you reading my thread and clarifying all the things I was wondering about. I'd love to play with (or against) you anytime

[Elkad]

My starting micro was terrible (probably my weakest play point), and having both REM (super-aggressive) and Commodore (generally very strong, despite his early flop this time) to my west concentrated my efforts that way. Towards you I had that Tundra to get through (the floodice was nice, but Hunters was a pretty terrible spot, other than it's strategic blockade location), and all that land to my south was more food-poor tundra. Hill sheep and tundra deer don't exactly lead to rapid growth. Since it was basically blocked off from everyone else, I stalled for Currency before settling it, blocked off my southern border with a couple cities, and then was lazy filling in the center.

You are right about my capital falling to REM anyway, and as I was posting in REM's thread (after posting here), I remembered the situation more accurately. Most of my stack (including those 15ish spears, and a GG HA) was close (2e of my jumbos on the hill I think?), and with the Academy encouraging him to not raze I was hoping I could retake it before he reinforced. I would have lost eventually anyway, but he was spread out enough that I should have been able to pick off a couple of those little stacks of his.

[NylesStandish]

Turn 143:




WESTMORELAND. O that we now had here
But one ten thousand of those men in Babylon
That do no work to-day!

KING. What's he that wishes so?
My cousin, Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin;
If we are mark'd to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from Babylon.
God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call'd the feast of Valentine.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Valentine.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say "To-morrow is Saint Valentine."
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say "These wounds I had on Valentine's day."
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words—
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester—
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Valentine Valentinian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in Babylon now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Valentines day.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]