[SPOILERS] Churchill of Portugal: Gallipoli Part II

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

You're not quite dead yet. Unlike the Falcons. Let's hope you're better at halftime adjustments.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Light reading for you, Xenu.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Light reading for you, Xenu.

Oh damn, another book? Lawyers, speed dial, go!

[spacetyrantxenu]

T93 - Wow, the turns are moving fast lately. I was hoping to not play this morning and take more time with this tonight but it's just me and Scooticator left on the clock so I don't want to hold this up all day. Here we go.



Well damn, he moved everything into the city. On the bright side he hasn't added any further reinforcements. I don't think I can play this yet, it looks like a losing attack but I need to sim this out and don't have time to do it now. And now that the city has grown to size 2 I have to assume he can whip walls very soon, and that would definitely shut down an attack. And then there's this -- Brick definitely has reinforcements on the way:



He isn't rival best power yet, I don't think. The graphs reflects last turn's power numbers and he only whipped once last turn and none this turn.

So unless he had a few cities naturally finishing unit builds this turn (which is certainly possible) I don't think he is the player tied with me for #1 power. But that stat is irrelevant, it only matters about the force brought to bear on these two tiles and I think Brick may have done enough to prevent losing that city. (For now! ...if I don't get this city I may activate grudge mode. )

Well, something to think about for today. Even if I don't attack the city I could consider the probably foolish idea of circumventing this fortress and pressing on against a more weakly defended city, like I assume the next one to the north would have to be. The end game for that would be to force a city trade, but then I'd be stuck with Terrapin where it is and couldn't raze it. This city has to move or it's going to be a problem for the rest of the game, whereas (from where I'm sitting) if I have my city where I've marked Black Fish it won't cause border problems.

So let's think about it and I'll run my sim after work tonight. If I choose not to attack now and try to move on to the next city (isolating his army in Terrapin) it will take me 4 turns at best to be in position to attack the next city. I'll have to hope Brick doesn't respond by moving part of his force onto the jungle 1N of Terrapin, because I need to stand on that tile to prevent him moving his force to defend his other city if I can threaten it. But that move is so obvious that I'm sure he'd do it, which would leave me out of position to attack at all (having to cross the river to do so), and one turn later to boot. If that happens it would be a matter of me having to march north on covered tiles expecting Brick to be able to reinforce the next city, in which case, there is no point to moving the army deeper into his territory. In that case I'd have to withdraw and this whole expense will have been for nothing. (Well it probably always was anyway, now wasn't it?)

So, tonight, sim and either attack or withdraw. As long as this force is intact at least I can recover my economy instantly. I'd be in HR by the time they made it home. Costly way to build out an HR garrison force, though.

All units unmoved, pending further evaluation. Dismissed!

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

T93 - Wow, the turns are moving fast lately. I was hoping to not play this morning and take more time with this tonight but it's just me and Scooticator left on the clock so I don't want to hold this up all day. Here we go.



Well damn, he moved everything into the city. On the bright side he hasn't added any further reinforcements. I don't think I can play this yet, it looks like a losing attack but I need to sim this out and don't have time to do it now. And now that the city has grown to size 2 I have to assume he can whip walls very soon, and that would definitely shut down an attack. And then there's this -- Brick definitely has reinforcements on the way:



He isn't rival best power yet, I don't think. The graphs reflects last turn's power numbers and he only whipped once last turn and none this turn.

So unless he had a few cities naturally finishing unit builds this turn (which is certainly possible) I don't think he is the player tied with me for #1 power. But that stat is irrelevant, it only matters about the force brought to bear on these two tiles and I think Brick may have done enough to prevent losing that city. (For now! ...if I don't get this city I may activate grudge mode. )

Well, something to think about for today. Even if I don't attack the city I could consider the probably foolish idea of circumventing this fortress and pressing on against a more weakly defended city, like I assume the next one to the north would have to be. The end game for that would be to force a city trade, but then I'd be stuck with Terrapin where it is and couldn't raze it. This city has to move or it's going to be a problem for the rest of the game, whereas (from where I'm sitting) if I have my city where I've marked Black Fish it won't cause border problems.

So let's think about it and I'll run my sim after work tonight. If I choose not to attack now and try to move on to the next city (isolating his army in Terrapin) it will take me 4 turns at best to be in position to attack the next city. I'll have to hope Brick doesn't respond by moving part of his force onto the jungle 1N of Terrapin, because I need to stand on that tile to prevent him moving his force to defend his other city if I can threaten it. But that move is so obvious that I'm sure he'd do it, which would leave me out of position to attack at all (having to cross the river to do so), and one turn later to boot. If that happens it would be a matter of me having to march north on covered tiles expecting Brick to be able to reinforce the next city, in which case, there is no point to moving the army deeper into his territory. In that case I'd have to withdraw and this whole expense will have been for nothing. (Well it probably always was anyway, now wasn't it?)

So, tonight, sim and either attack or withdraw. As long as this force is intact at least I can recover my economy instantly. I'd be in HR by the time they made it home. Costly way to build out an HR garrison force, though.

All units unmoved, pending further evaluation. Dismissed!

Have you promoted any units yet? If so, tell me how you promoted them. If I get some time I can run a sim or two.

[spacetyrantxenu]

See the previous page for xp levels and promos. I haven't done any yet.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I ran several sims to get a feel for what I was up against and the combat generally came out pretty close, but in my favor more times than not. On average I can win the fight and burn the city this turn. I attacked with every unit in the sim, just testing the likelihood of getting the city here, not specifically what it will cost to do it. Sim results:

WIN - attempt 1: good luck
burn city, win 8 lose 2, 3 archers spare

LOSE - attempt 2:
lose 10, win 3, epic fail. Just total wtf combat rolls. I kept attacking when it was obvious I'd lose just to see how bad it would get. Yep. Hopefully this won't happen in the real attack.

The rest of these sims are what I'd consider more likely game conditions. I basically gave all of the enemy AI units 10% fortify bonus by putting them on the AI defense mission and ending turn three times. I did that because I didn't know exactly how long each of Brick's units had fortified. The lead archer had +25% (5 turns), but 3 of the units had just been moved in and didn't have any fortify bonus. I didn't work the math but it felt like it would roughly approximate the real situation by giving 10% to every unit. I assume that excludes the two chariots.

WIN - attempt 3:
lose 5, win 8, burn city (took combat promos on swords, CR on axes/spears)

WIN - attempt 4: lead attack with a CR1 axe (vs. shock axe to soften it - 12.2% odds)
lose 2, win 8, 3 archers spare.
NOTE - sacrificed a lead axe against shock axe to start the attack - this seems a better opening.

LOSE - attempt 5: bad luck at start
lose 6, win 7, 1 unit short. probable win next turn.

WIN - attempt 6: lead w/ C1 axe (10.9% odds)
lose 4, win 8, 1 archer spare

WIN - attempt 7: (VERY good luck early)
lose 3, win 8, 2 archer spare

WIN - attempt 8: (good open from axe/sword, good luck overall)
lose 3, win 8, 2 archer spare

WIN - attempt 9: (opening axe WON at 9% - unlock HE!)
lose 2, win 8, 3 archer spare

WIN - attempt 10: (opening axe won 7-1.., terrible luck in middle)
lose 4, win 8, 1 archer spare

OK, so this looks possible if my test setup is anything like the real map and I don't get screwed by the RNG.

[spacetyrantxenu]

T93 - Time for the attack!

And immediately a problem...the lead defender against my axes is the CG1 archer, not the C1/Shock axe I wanted and had been getting in my sim. Apparently the extra 15% from fortify bonus gave Brick's archer better odds against my swords/axes than the shock axe (without bonus) had. So I need to scratch the archer to get him out of the way. With one of my archers? That would deplete my reserves and seems like a bad idea, but I don't want to waste a sword on the shock axe. I guess don't overthink it -- take the most favorable odds and hope for the best.

1. Axe CR1 vs. Archer CG1 - 16.6% -- LOSE EVERY ROUND, epic fail. That should probably scuttle this whole attack...but we came to dance.
2. Sword C1 vs. Axe C1/Shock - 9.7% - LOSE 3 to 5, axe to 2.6 strength.
3. Sword C1 vs. Archer CG1 - 27.9% - LOSE 3 to 5, archer to 1.9 strength.
4. Sword vs. Archer D1 - 24.7% - LOSE 4 to 5, archer to 0.7 strength.
5. Sword vs. Archer - 27.5% - WIN, FINALLY! (6 to 2), Sword to 3.6 strength.

So this isn't going well but it isn't hopeless yet. I've damaged his top defenders to where I can clean them up if I can just get back around to them with decent units. Round 6 is -- wait, WTF?? Where did Brick's spear pick up a shock promotion???




Uh oh.

Well this attack is over.

There were only two possibilities, either Brick promoted the spear after he ended turn earlier (he logged back in later on) or I fucked up the sim sandbox. Guess which one is more likely?

Yeah, I fucked up the sandbox. I don't know if it's because the nice T92 overview map was the one that was still up on my second monitor or what, but I have screens of the situation on both T92 and T93, and it's obvious that Brick had already promoted the spear before I logged in at 6:30 this morning to take a look. So I had the right intel and built the sandbox using the old data. I knew winning would be a close contest but putting shock on the spear makes this basically unwinnable now -- especially after my opening axe decided to die without fighting back.

Retreat.

Well, I only wasted 1/3 of my stack and stopped before I gave Brick a great general. I got one meaningless victory and wounded 3 of Brick's units that will heal, amounting to nothing for me. What an awful result...this is really disappointing. Not so much losing the fight but missing something obvious that really made a difference in the outcome. It just didn't occur to me that I was building the sim using old data....

Other than that I moved around a few workers and got peace with Brick.




Time to shuffle the dotmap. I don't like the options nearly as much this way and I still want that gold. Then again...with Monarchy due (and affordable) in a few turns forget the gold and just build some freaking archers.




What a wretched lot. Why are these people unhappy? They're the ones I let live. They should be happy and get back to work. Maybe when the troops come home they can be convinced to work harder and be more content. Or else?

End of turn demographics, minus 24,000 soldiers TYVM.

That's only like 3% of my population, surely we could have killed off more than that. Maybe in the next war.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Oh, and how this game trolls me....



This couldn't have waited a few turns until Monarchy was in and my soldiers were available for HR garrison? Then there's the reality issue...my soldiers have not yet returned from war, they're still marching back. So where did the baby boom come from, the shop keepers and draft dodgers? We have an army of cuckolds returning from war!

I guess I should set every build to a worker or a settler so these unhappy, useless eaters don't take more food from the working citizens. Every city besides Blue Fish is already over the happy cap. I could whip off these dissenters but that would just compound the problem. Four turns to HR...go go go.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I wish you had called, I could have helped with this.



In the sandbox you select the AI civ, edit unit mode, then select UNITAI_CITY_DEFENSE as the script and the unit will stay where it is supposed to stay for your sim. Then you just wait 1-5 turns to get to the appropriate fortification bonus (5-25%). If there are units with differing fortification bonuses in the defending stack just wait a turn or however many is necessary, then go back into the sandbox and add that unit. One unit with 25% bonus, add that unit, add the script above, wait five turns. If you have a 20% and a 10% bonus, add the first unit, wait two turns, add the second unit, wait two more turns (adding the script above to each), then run your sim.

As for the shock bonus, yeah, sandbox won't help with that. Better luck next time.