[Spoilers] Old Human Tourist: Empress of Azteca

[Old Harry]

Good news from NoStats - Pindi didn't recapture any of the cities we took . The other good news is that we put on 73 score points just from captured population - given that we've been drafting about 10 pop points a turn for the last seven turns that means we've broken even, right?

Attack autopsy

To give you an idea of how well this turn went:

Our original stretch plan, if everything fell into place perfectly was to take eight cities on the first turn of the war. In the end we took six, with Madrigal and Avernus proving too much of a stretch. Madrigal needed two more workers than we had in range and for GoS to be empty so that one Commando could capture two cities. Avernus could have fallen, but then Pindicator could have counter-attacked to recapture it or Strand so we held back.

The other half of the original plan was to kill every Cat and CKN in Pindicator's stack. His moving that stack and adding eight more Cuirs put paid to this, but did allow us to wipe out all his scary hitters and half of the collateral-dealing units on t1 of the war - had he kept the eight Cuirs in the west there is a good chance we wouldn't have risked Commandoing the capital though, so I'm happy with how things turned out . We got a bit lucky with this phase of the fight - I expected to lose five battles, leaving five Cuirs to promo-heal and hit back whereas we only lost three and only one Cuir can hit us back .

The next phase of the war is to boat some reinforcement Infantry over and consolidate while looking for further Commando/railroad/2-mover opportunities. In theory our 2-mover stack could take the Shrine next turn, but I expect the CKNs and Pikes from Avernus to fall back and defend - in that case we'll probably advance four Infantry while our 2-movers spend a turn healing, but we'll have to sim how well they'll stand up to being hit by 10 CKNs...

Now we just have to wait 30 hours for the turn to roll .

-----

Here's an unrelated question - Strand is size 15 but the Granary didn't survive capture - it probably won't ever grow again so is it worth building one just for the health? A harbour is going to be more use isn't it...

[Fintourist]

We need to be vigilant for dtay and Dreylin/Cynheard trying to muscle in on our kill, but I doubt the former will, and the latter could help us end our war weariness nightmare (is 130 a lot?) sooner.

Yeah, let's not count on people leaving us alone. Dreylin was strolling with a large stack in pindiland when dtay attacked pindicator. He did not do anything, but it looked more like an attempt to help pindi than steal his land. And that shrine is so delicious that practically everyone in the neighborhood should be at least making some thoughts about it. We'll see if dtay wants to fight for it.

--> Finishing pindi off in vacuum would now be pretty trivial and fast, but due to possible pressure we need to pay attention and consider bringing reinforcements, incl. couple of cannons in the north. If everything with pindi goes well and we want further land it probably will happen in the north as well. (I'm not trying to discount my comment about looking strong enough in our core that BGN+dtay don't get bad ideas there)

130 WW is not too bad, but we will feel the effect. I think Azza war gave us something similar and Mardoc war was 200+ IIRC.


Overall, this was a successful first turn. Of course the big downside compared to original plan (due to pindi moving his stack 2 tiles east) was the fact that we did not take Avernus and aren't yet threatening the shrine city with infantry. And that pindi still has 10 CKNs left, which isn't a huge problem, but still something that we need to take into account with our movements.

Great report, OH

Crosspost-EDIT: You actually addressed more or less everything above.

[von Adlercreutz]

Nice going guys! I was actually watching the stream when you were killing the Pindi stack near the shrine. Hope that me watching it didn't slow it down too much .

[Fintourist]

Really looking forward to seeing how the new turn looks and how everyone has reacted.. Should we ask pindi if he is fine with us logging in outside our split (and not moving anything)?? This turn we were both available during the first split, but that won't always be the case and I would enjoy seeing the tactical situation semi-regularly with my bare eyes :P

[Old Harry]

Nice going guys! I was actually watching the stream when you were killing the Pindi stack near the shrine. Hope that me watching it didn't slow it down too much .

Heh, well I was finding it all a bit sluggish, but I'm sure that's more to do with my machine...

Really looking forward to seeing how the new turn looks and how everyone has reacted.. Should we ask pindi if he is fine with us logging in outside our split (and not moving anything)?? This turn we were both available during the first split, but that won't always be the case and I would enjoy seeing the tactical situation semi-regularly with my bare eyes :P

Sure - I probably won't log in on the wrong side, but it'd be good if you can grab screenshots to inform the next turn.

I counted about 5 Rifles, 30 Knights and 20 cats in Dreylin's territory this turn. It'd be good if he used some of those on the 6 Muskets in Pindi's west, or just ignores us altogether, but if he decides to help Pindi out then we could be in trouble...

Dtay only has one Cav and about eight Rifles on this continent, but he does have a stack of five Galleons just to the north where he just had that fight with TBS, which we should keep an eye on as well.

[Old Harry]

Turn 202

Ready for more action? Fintourist got to make the first two captures this turn. An Infantry walked into the empty Otter Ferry.


And a Cav walked into the empty shrine city getting us 110 gold.


We suspect that dtay is inclined to return the favour we paid him earlier in the game - he's got 9 cav within striking distance of the shrine next turn (18 in a couple of turns). With 42 defenders we're not too worried yet.


To discourage dtay I moved our boats threateningly. Will Pindicator just hunker down in Avernus rather than counter attacking?


In the west our Commandos went to work again. Tandem first:

- C4 Commando Cav vs CG2 Musket 63%.... WIN!
We get 214 gold and the Lighthouse, harbour and customs house survive!

Next its Madrigal
- C4 Commando Cav vs Warrior 99%... WIN!

202 gold, granary, Force, Academy and Uni of Sankore! All very nice.

Then White Falls falls:
- C4 Commando Cav vs Axe 99%... WIN (2 hits)

209 gold, Granary, LH, Forge and SA all survive. This is the first real hitch of the attack though - if we'd captured White Falls then Madrigal the culture would have fallen away and we'd be able to reinforce . As it is Pindi could counter attack Madrigal with two Muskets, a Cuir and a Longbow. We decided to let him recapture Madrigal but not the others. That leaves us looking like this (BTW look at the score board .)


Finally we set up the attacks on Brayle and the 12 Duns next turn - there are 4 Cuirs on this tile now, 2 full strength, one is 10.3/12 and one is ~3/12.


Graphs and demos. BGN's mfg is still scary.

[Ceiliazul]

Did you decide not to use the great artist in the shrine city?

[Old Harry]

I had estimated that using the artist to bomb would be worth 2000 gold over ten turns of Anarchy, but actually we only face nine turns so the shrine would bring in 1400 gold and the city itself would make about 400 beakers.

Fintourist worked out it would delay our 3-man golden age by about 10 turns and the 4-man GA similarly. Our plan is for that fourth golden age to give us a boost into space ahead of BGN, so pushing it back to a point where he's already launched wouldn't be great .

In the end we thought that delaying the golden age probably wasn't worth the extra income (even though the 1400 would be front-loaded). Now whether 60% culture would be handy or not is another matter. We'll have to see what dtay and Pindicator do next...

[Fintourist]

Did you decide not to use the great artist in the shrine city?

Yeah, we discussed that and originally decided against it. From economic perspective getting rid of 9 turns of anarchy is weaker that other usages of a great person, so basically the question is whether we need an artist bomb to hold the city. So far we have believed that we can hold the city without it, but if the future proves us wrong... This is something that can be pointed out as a mistake. We had this turn so many things to discuss that we did not chat about the artist, OH might have put it on a boat towards the shrine city just in case..

Currently we have 42 bodies in the shrine city of which 13 are infantries + we still have the next turn time to reinforce it before dtay can attack. Next turn dtay can attack us with max 9 cavs assuming he does not manage to get rid of pindi's culture somehow. So the first real attack can happen in the 2nd half of turn 203. If dtay commits totally he can then get at least 18 cavs + ~10 rifles + support from airships in place (but again he would need to get rid of pindi's culture E of Shrine city or we can attack out and kill his rifles next to the city). That' still not really enough so the question is whether dtay will keep adding more and more troops in the area.

We of course need to also take into account pindi's remaining ~20 units in the east (2 cuirs + 10 CKN + ~8 melee). However, the turn order which we have is practical from our perspective: We play --> Dtay --> pindicator. This means that pindi sending his 10 CKNs and dtay following with his hitters does not happen naturally / without some diplo-ish arrangements and we get to heal, promote and react after pindi's move and before dtay can attack. I guess this exact moment might in fact be the best moment to cause us losses with a following sequence:
1. Pindi sends everything against us and leaves Avernus empty
2. We reinforce in the best way possible (our units are not yet fortified so they won't heal, just some promo-heals)
3. Dtay captures Avernus with a lonely cav he has in range
4. Dtay attacks us with his airships and 18 cavs + possible rifles that he moves forward this turn
The above sequence still does not lead us to immediately losing the shrine city, just costs us a decent amount of units + it would require some mind-reading between pindi and dtay... so I'm not thaaat worried about it.

***

The real problems can be created if dtay just commits everything he has to screwing us and just keeps bringing more units + Dreylin commits everything he has in the west and those two attack us simultaneously. Unless EPs screw us we should get a good visibility of how Dreylin is advancing next turn. He has a big stack, but he still does not have Mil.Trad so it will take at least couple of turns before we need to deal with Cavs in the west.. FYI, it's pretty clear that he is making a move. He closed borders with us last turn.

Due to the Dreylin threat the culture bug around the Madrigal is F*cking annoying. We would really like to consolidate our current gains fast there so once Dreylin arrives, we would not look vulnerable. Let's see what pindi does and whether we can recapture Madrigal next turn, then we should be a lot wiser about our options and threats.

***

Macro-wise we really aren't making it too easy for us. Our core is already squeezed between two strong civs, BGN + Dtay, and now we are attacking the middle part of a new continent where we will open a 2nd front with dtay + new fronts with Dreylin and WilliamLP. The last one hopefully is busy enough currently though.

But well, our conclusion was that BGN's land advantage is big enough that we need to improve our position further and we considered this as the best of our options. Fast attack + fast consolidation might make a risky move like this successful and speed up our own space race timing. So far everything is still possible: 11 cities captured during the first two turns, next turn the count should be 12 or 13 depending on whether Madrigal is ours. And we haven't lost too many units (2x inf, 2x cav, 1 cuir). There is still plenty of time to fall on our faces, but let's see.



This ended up being a much longer reply than I planned :P

[Old Harry]

Turn 203 prelude

Interesting... dtay and Pindicator signed peace (presumably not a cease fire), Pindi artist bombed Avernus, then threw everything he has at the Shrine. We won every battle and got a great general for his trouble, but our stack is pretty bashed up.


If Pindi offered dtay open borders then he can accept and hit the shrine with 10 airships, 2 catapults, 8 Rifles and 18 Cavalry.

We have a bunch of infantry that can take promotions to heal to 14-17/20. They could take a combat promo or CG1. We also have two Grenadiers that can promote to CG3 and upgrade to Machine Guns.

If we just want to slow dtay down a turn we can capture Avernus (it's empty now) and then send six cuirs to pillage the village, pasture and roads E of the shrine. That means dtay can only hit with 10 cav this turn, after which our Infantry should all be healed back to 100% health. We'll have issues with Avernus and Strand, but a concerted effort of road cutting might solve those as well...

The good news is that both Brayle and 12 Duns should fall this turn.


In the west things are more interesting - Pindi has emptied his cities to converge on Madrigal - we're not taking it this turn unfortunately, but Dreylin can... So given the relative strengths of our military in the area (Dreylin can hit White Falls with 18 Knights this turn if he wants and has at least ten more Knights, perhaps 20 while we have 3 Rifles, 12 Infantry and 3 Commandos in the area to defend a 4-city culture-free frontier) I can see a case for letting Dreylin have Tyr, Willow Creek and Madrigal and perhaps Shoal. Willow Creek and Tyr have some monk wonders which I'm not too bothered about.

We could capture Tyr and Shoal with commandos, the former would be a suicide mission and could burn the city if we really want to piss Dreylin off, the latter is an easy capture, but Madrigal's culture prevents us from reinforcing it properly...


So I think we should commando Shoal, move the Cav out of the city SE to a tile that we put 2 Inf and 3 Rifles on, then declare on Dreylin offering white peace. That means he gets Tyr and Madrigal and allows us to focus on dtay for ten turns. We have a Frigate on the north coast and four Frigates and several Galleons on the south coast to incentivise his cooperation in this matter, but if he wants it White Falls is his this turn.

On a more meta level I really don't want to fight Dreylin because then BGN can take advantage.

Oh, and by the end of this turn Pindicator might just be dead!