[SPOILERS] Whosit Plays Alone for Fun (and Profit?)

[Whosit]

I don't know, but even if it was a Cease Fire, all my troops were teleported out of Dreylin's territory. I'd have been able to attack and capture Greywacke this turn, but now it'd take another turn to move my units back, he'd have another turn to whip units and reinforce, and frankly it wouldn't be fair to me what with the planning I did. I don't know what I signed because I think it triggered before I even logged into the game.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Almost certainly it's a cease fire. My understanding of the events is that:

1. You sent a message to Dreylin effectively declaring war ("Your head would look nice on a spear!").
2. You actually declared war.
3. Dreylin received your message via a diplomacy window. Apparently you don't get just a blank screen with text in this situation, so it also sent a cease fire offer, which he accepted.
4. ...you've entered into a cease fire that you didn't intend to offer (obviously).

The part where it gets really confusing is that apparently this happened to Dreylin earlier in the game, so he understood what happened to you here. He lived with the outcome of the accidental cease fire before, I believe, but I don't know more context about the impact and how it compares to this incident here. Where I am in this process is trying to get input from people regarding whether the previous incident serves as precedent to eat the unfortunate cease fire (since you unwittingly allowed it to be a possibility, and since Dreylin has already taken that outcome once before), or if there should be a reload since there is basically no way your message declaring war should have been taken as a means to get an extra turn of peace. It kind of sucks either way. If you guys can wait maybe someone will give another opinion.

Or maybe there is a game admin who's supposed to handle this? No one has said anything on that point yet.

[Whosit]

I don't think there's a game admin.

And while it's nice, I guess, that Dreylin ate a cease fire earlier, if this has to stand I'd feel like I'm being punished because I had no way of knowing that's how it works and Dreylin exploited it. I guess I'll just wait to see what lurker opinion is before I decide to throw a fit or not.

[Whosit]

T94B: Blood for the Blood Lurkers

When you read this Dreylin, no hard feelings intended. I don't know if I'll play any more MP games after this one, but if I do I'll probably end up with a Jowy-like reputation for aggression (without, say, Commodore's skill and reputation for actually being able to pull it off).

Dreylin offered Greywacke for peace, which I declined because I can take the city anyway and I have slightly more ambitious goals. Turns out he withdrew some units from the city, leaving only two Axe-guys.



At the start of the turn, he has 10 cities to my 8.

I begin the assault, getting relatively favorable hits in, though I end up using one of my Shock axes to finish off one of his Axes that didn't take too many hits from the Jaguar.












I neglected, of course, to bring a pair of workers with me, so I wasn't able to kill that Warrior and see what's waiting for me in the fog. I'd expect a counter-attack to be ready, but I think that my new garrison should hold against whatever he can throw at my new city at least in the next turn.

Looks like he might be planning to road at me. We'll see. I'd like him to send a counter-invasion, to be honest. Would make it easier to deal with those units rather than hitting them in a city. Even so, any new units in Arkose shouldn't have full fortification bonuses by the time I attack.



Popped Dreylin's scout here. Warrior didn't have good enough odds going across the river, so used a Jaguar. Didn't want to risk Dreylin spotting my second stack. He must know I have more units, but I don't want him knowing exactly what or where they are.



So, that GNP. Lemme tell you, it doesn't go up very much even when I turn science on. Ha, I know I'm out of the race at this point in the game when I'm 1/10 the economy of the leader. I kinda wonder if I'd even have had a chance if I hadn't been building up for a massive classical age war.


I'll keep doing my best to add on cottages and work as many river tiles as I can just to squeeze out a little extra commerce.

Not sure when Phase 2 is going to be put into motion. I'll probably start sending units towards Arkose next turn, but might delay the Chariots by a turn, depending on what I see.

[Whosit]

Turn 95



My thoughts exactly.

So, my failure to bring combat engineers along on my attack has had some significant effects. Because I could not kill that Warrior, Dreylin sabotaged the roads (then disbanded the Warrior), and there are 3 much-needed Workers I cannot capture. I'd also be 1 turn closer to Breccia. Too bad I don't have G2 units.




I elected to not bring the Chariots forward this turn, on the fear that Dreylin would use those 2 Workers to road 1W of Arkose and hit the Chariots with spears/axes. I'm not sure if that would have been a good move, what with the river in the way, but it's something that could have been done. Besides, I'd rather he bring those units to my territory, though now that I've moved my 2nd little stack forward, not sure what he'll do. I wonder if he'll try to block me off from getting into that hill forest.

Anyway, he can reinforce either city, and he can definitely reinforce Breccia to the point that what remains of Squad A can't take it. I know that the risks of me splitting my forces like this are that neither force will be strong enough to take their objective. However, I'll have 7-8 Chariots to reinforce the push on Arkose, and I think that will be enough to punch through the cities defense along with the other units. If Dreylin abandons the hill 1SW of Arkose, I might even promote my Jaguars to W2 to advance more quickly, although I only have 4 in that group, so that's probably small enough that they'd get wiped out without cover. Probably best to wait the extra turn.

The other lingering question is how many more units does Dreylin have in the fog? There are 54,000 soldier points worth of units visible to me. At a rough estimate, Dreylin's power is 2/3 of mine based on the graphs. I think I'm close to 250,000 right now, so his total power might be around 180,000. To take a stab at what's what, 18 (pop) 27 (barracks) 20? (techs), so perhaps 65,000 or 70,000 from non-units. So, I feel reasonably confident in saying that what I'm seeing represents about half of his total units. He has nine cities, and each is going to need at least one unit to garrison it. I've seen no evidence that he's teched Archery (perhaps he's teched it, but hasn't produced Archers). He'll still have plenty of Warriors around, and he's probably keeping some Axemen on Grimace's border. Therefore, I imagine he's in the process of pulling 4-6 Axemen to my front, in addition to what he's building/whipping.

I should still be able to lay "siege" to Breccia and pillage the silver mine, which I would imagine would put many of his cities into unhappiness, hurting his ability to whip. Basically, I think this'll be a war of attrition, but my economy is already on the verge of collapse (AI set one of my cities to work coast just so I could keep a positive income at 0% science. How sad).



Oh, then there's this. Ruins my dotmap, sadly, so I'm going to see about burning it first opportunity I get. I'll have a jaguar out of Utopia in a couple of turns that'll investigate. As long as it's not stuffed with Axes, I should be OK. A free city woulda been nice, but I like my intended placement better.

I need more workers oh so badly. I'm pulling some to Beacon (formerly Greywacke) to build roads and improve tiles when the city comes fully under my control (and the maintenance will probably plunge me into the negatives). I need to lay down more cottages and improve more river tiles just to scrape up more money. I also need to get into some more big fights to lose more units, lol.

[Whosit]

4 whips from Dreylin, yikes. Probably 4 more axes on the next turn, eh? I'm doing my best to avoid whipping my largest cities, but a few of the lackluster ones will be due whips soon.

Pillaging his Silver mine can't happen soon enough.

[Whosit]

Turn 96

OK, so Breccia and Arkose were both 1-pop whipped, of course. Axes or Spears, we'll see which. Spears would actually be more inconvenient right now.

Here are the current disposition of forces:






So, I originally thought that my 9 Chariots could put a dent into Arkose's garrison, but it only took a few combat sim rounds to show that 2 Spearmen can easily deflect that many Chariots. So, that sucks. That gives me one more tactical option. Fork.

I imagine that Dreylin will take that stack on the hill and use it to reinforce one or both of his cities under threat. It's possible that he will leave 1 or 2 units to defend the hill to prevent me from taking it. My stacks are Jaguar heavy, so my striking power when not attacking cities is limited, unfortunately, but I can always promote to Shock in a pinch. Poor man's axe. Anyway, ideally, Squad A takes up position on the Silver hill 1W of Breccia, and Squad B takes the hill 1SW of Arkose. If my Chariot group occupies the same hill, they can attack either city (preferably the one with fewer spearmen). There's the possibility that Dreylin dry-whips units in both cities next turn as well. By the time I can attack in the second half of Turn 98, he'll surely have fortified both cities a great deal. Because my 1-movers are split (two groups of 7 as it so happens), I need to be able to fork with the Chariots. Too bad Spears pretty much hard-counter them. I guess I thought they could still get a hit or two in on the attack. Ah, well.

On the field, I have visibility on 12 Dreylin units, and I have 23. I don't believe I'll be able to bring any more of my units into striking range in the next two turns (well, I could promote a Jaguar to W2 to join Squad B. Not an ideal promo but an extra hitter is an extra hitter). Actually, I could pull another one that's slightly wounded. I should log back in and do that.

No idea how many more units Dreylin will bring in on the next two moves he gets. Probably 4-6? I think the battle for these cities is gonna come down to tactics and luck. Oy, too bad I don't have HBR. Even Shock Chariots would be nice here.

[Whosit]

Oops. Of course in the 15 minutes it takes me to write that, Jowy logs in and rolls the turn. Well, hopefully the battle doesn't come down to a single wounded Jaguar.

The one bit of spoiler info I got was, yes, Dreylin had whipped axes in Breccia and Arkose.

[Whosit]

By the way Dreylin, when you inevitably read this.... COMMODORE MADE ME DO IT! BLAME HIM!!

Ha ha ha, just kidding. All Commodore did was encourage me to perhaps invest too much in Jaguars rather than Axes. I'm playing Boudica of Aztecs, no way I wasn't gonna get in an early war with someone. I think I was playing alright, but I doubt I'd have won the race to knights. I hope I at least made things exciting.

[Whosit]

Dreylin has 18 units in view now, so it was on the high end of the estimate. Interestingly, and distressingly, there's a chariot too. Oh, and an Archer, so he does have the tech. I'll have to start adding spears soon, but at least Jaguars can give slight cover to axes.

Dreylin also sent me a PM saying "well played" and a suggestion that he'd want to see the results, but I'm not sure what he means. Probably a bit too much diplo for this game. I wonder if he's seeing something I am not. Arkose cannot fall this turn. However, there may be one tactical play for me. I'm gonna have to sim it out, because it may not be so great.




I have a few options here. Breccia is the most vulnerable, but has enough units defending that Squad A isn't enough to capture it on its own. Forking with the Chariots is a nice idea, but what's troublesome is that little squad that could reinforce either city. Dang, if only Dreylin had chopped that forest faster. I could see what my odds of clearing that group of 4 out is, but It's going to cost me 3-4 Chariots just to knock off that Spearman, and it'll take the rest to clear it out, leaving nothing to help out in Breccia.

I do have another option, which would be to promote more Jaguars from Squad B to Woodsman 2 and have them take that forest path towards Breccia. Might cover that lone Jaguar with an Axe, so Dreylin would have to spend at least a couple units to clear them off the hill.

Gonna run some sims. Still, not sure why he said "well played" as though he'd lost the war. Perhaps he realized Breccia will fall because he crammed so much defense into the (possibly) less important Arkose? I dunno. He probably didn't mean to play head games, but....

I expected Arkose to be the city to fall, but that's the one I'll have to work harder to crack. That means the settler enroute to settle 1N will have to go elsewhere. I guess I can just refound Serenity and build another Settler once Arkose is ready to crumble. I was just wary of leaving that open space for more than a few turns. Wouldn't want Grimace to plop a Settler down or something (though it'd be pretty foolish of him to do).