RB Pitboss #1 [SPOILERS] Willem of Persia

[shadyforce]

T168: The siege of Utica - part 1

Daniel's stack has a pop a Utica and the results were much more impressive than I expected. 7 units in total killed, which I think were 5 Rifles a Musket and probably a Cavalry. One of the Rifles was a GG Guerilla 3 which leaves only Vercingetorix left. Though the General himself is sitting on 0.2/15 health so not much chance he'll be a top defender any time soon.

What's more, Daniel's stack seems to have survived ok. In particular, he still has a full health guerilla Rifle for defence, and a near full health cannon survived and I don't know if he attacked with them but he also has a full health Knight and War Elephant.

In the mean time, I have advanced my mini-stack to just across the river from Utica and Daniel has unloaded another 2 Rifle + 2 Cannon 1E of the city. This time, I don't think Elkad has the firepower to hit any of our stacks effectively so Utica is in trouble.

We still don't have enough attackers to actually capture the city next turn even in ideal circumstances but expect heavy loss to Elkad's army and maybe the turn afterwards, we can raze Utica.

Here is the screenshot:



If you're wondering why I promoted a Cannon to Drill 1, it's because a few turns ago I wanted to give a Cannon ~60% odds attacking a Rifle that was in the open and I then cleaned the weakened Rifle up with a War Elephant. But in a stroke of luck, neither the Cannon nor the War Elephant took any damage.

[spacemanmf]

Oooh just a warrior in the coastal city. Any chance of nearby boat support to threaten to take the city and provide distraction from the frontlines?

[shadyforce]

Kerk is my only coastal city nearby and it is just out of resistance.We could feasably send a boat around the long way but Elkad would see it travelling and would have plenty of warning.

[shadyforce]

T169:

Elkad creams all of Daniel's units. He re-drafts 3 of his cities, burns his cats and uses everything except 4 Longbow in Carthage to do so. I guess I underestimated how much damage he could do but I guess he also got the benefit of start-of-turn healing and promotions.

My units were hit with a cat and Vercingetorix had a pop as well, weakening the Cannon but otherwise intact.

I debated for a while whether to retreat or hit the city to kill some weakened units (no chance of taking the city). In the end I decide to give Utica a whack. 3 Cannons attack and only 1 survives. Then I send in 3 Rifles (who all win at 90+%, the Knight (who dies at ~70% and the War Elephant (who wins at ~55%). I killed 2 Rifles a Cav and a Musket, which is not bad. Plus my Rifles had reasonable health left. And I reinforce the stack with a fresh Rifle/Cannon pair that was on the forest.

Kerk comes out of resistance but has a bunch of unhappy faces. I estimate I need to kill off about 4/5 pop to provent starvation. I decide to whip a Theatre (2 pop) and also a Colosseum (2 pop). I then put the Theatre back above the Colosseum and selected build culture along with 10% culture on the slider and rejig the worked tiles to ensure Kerk's borders pop right away but without it starving.

The 10% culture helped elsewhere as well because I had 3 other cities with an unhappy face, due to WW, draft+whip anger, etc. Also The Lighthouse is garrisonless and I've been growing it steadily as pure draft city. (Globe will go here when I have enough Theatres).

T170:

Elkad retaliates but this time the defending stack wins. He sends in 2 Cats and then a bunch of Rifles and Cavalry. But he ended up losing another Rifle and 3 Cavalry! I lost 1 of my Cannon, and 1 Rifle.

So this turn my survivors, 3 Rifles, 1 WE, 1 Cannon, promote and retreat to the forest and are joined by a fresh Rifle from Kerk. I'm not sure if he will try and hit my stack or not but if not I'll pobably heal on the forest before attempting to return to Kerk, unless Elkad has insufficient units in position to effectively hit my units on that tile 1S of Kerk, in which case I'll retreat right away. I think the next assault on Elkad will have to wait for Machine Guns.

Kerk's borders pop giving the city security from a rush attack from the Lins as well as 20% defence. Also The Theatre completes immediately which caught me by surprise but I guess it works like growing... if you start a worker/settler with enough food in the box to grow, you'll grow anyway. However the colosseum didn't complete, presumably because there is a limit of 1 building at a time which make sense.

I'm going to build culture and run some artists for 6 turns to pop the borders again for additional visibility towards Lins and extra city defence. Also worth noting is that Kerk is responsible for 12gpt in expenses, double it's nearest rival. However, it's also pulling in around 30gpt (after being whipped to size 8, with 2 unhappy citizens and an artist hired) making it the second highest earner after Central Command!

[shadyforce]

T171

A fairly quiet turn. Military Tradition is in and Daniel is now on Scientific Method, due in 5 turns. A barb city that has appeared on the rice city site to my north has reached size 2 so I drafted a Rifle in The Grocer to send up to capture the city which, last I checked, had 2 Longbows in it. Rego's culture is however encroaching on the spot so I'll need to run culture here from the start to get back the Rice tile in particular.

Elkad parks all his units in Utica and Carthage and makes no move in the direction of my stack so I safely retreat to the tile S of Kerk, which has been renamed to The Courthouse.

The Courthouse did not complete it's Colosseum last turn so I switched off Culture to finish it. But I have enough units in the city as military police now to handle the unhappiness anyway.

Next turn draft anger wears off in most of my cities so I'll do another round. Cannon and Cavalry are what I'm really short in. Still, can't have too many Rifles. Also, I've decided I need a few more workers so The Harbour is building some.

[Dantski]

T171

A fairly quiet turn. Military Tradition is in and Daniel is now on Scientific Method, due in 5 turns. A barb city that has appeared on the rice city site to my north has reached size 2 so I drafted a Rifle in The Grocer to send up to capture the city which, last I checked, had 2 Longbows in it. Rego's culture is however encroaching on the spot so I'll need to run culture here from the start to get back the Rice tile in particular.

Elkad parks all his units in Utica and Carthage and makes no move in the direction of my stack so I safely retreat to the tile S of Kerk, which has been renamed to The Courthouse.

The Courthouse did not complete it's Colosseum last turn so I switched off Culture to finish it. But I have enough units in the city as military police now to handle the unhappiness anyway.

Next turn draft anger wears off in most of my cities so I'll do another round. Cannon and Cavalry are what I'm really short in. Still, can't have too many Rifles. Also, I've decided I need a few more workers so The Harbour is building some.

Thanks for the update, sounds like you're continuing the offensive soon by drafting more.

[shadyforce]

I'm drafting because the unhappiness wore off and regrowing the pop within 10 turns is easy. More Rifles is always better. I don't think I'll be in an offensive war any time soon, at least not until Machine Guns and even then maybe not.

T173:

Rego discovers Steam Power and I've requested it off him. Hopefully I have a few coals in mined hills for some extra hammers. Railroad will take 12 long turns but I guess it is an expensive tech and will be for the others as well. That gives me ample time to build the rest of the necessary units and come up with an offensive plan if I so choose. But here is good reason why this may not happen:



I have plenty of Rifles in and around The Courthouse and the Lins stack is short of Rifles and Cats so I'm not in any danger at the moment. But I'm speeding up Cannon production in light of the increased threat level.

[shadyforce]

T175:

Quiet turns and not much has changed. Kodii hasn't lost any more cities lately so hopefully he's fortifying his position. Daniel is causing havok against Munro. He absolutely slaughtered a large stack of Roman Rifles and put pressure on Munro's capital thus removing some pressure from Kodii presumably.

Rego and Exploit are still in an enforced 10 turns of peace. There is some negotiating going on between them about signing a NAP or trading tech or some nonsense like that. Rego knows what I think of it. Exploit either switches to our side or he does not. Any NAP or tech sharing agreement between India and Inca while they are still on opposite sides of the global war is stupid and potentially destructive to both their alliances.

It also hasn't escaped our attention that both Inca and Zulu have started drafting units on the same turn and and shortly after the Lins' newly assembled stack in Popcorn. Each of those 3 enemy civs can hit 2 out of me, Rego and Sunrise between them. So while we don't know who the target is, it looks like there is a target in the near future and we will have to make sure we are prepared.

What relly annoys me is that Broker is free to expand and tech away in his little corner coompletely unmolested. I wish someone was near him to make him sweat it out for once. He's having too easy a ride in this game.

Tech situation:

We are still up Steel, Steam Power and Economics.
Broker has researched Constitution. Not the most dangerous tech in its own right but it leads to Assembly Line and Infantry.

We are currently on our way to Railroad (~10 turns) and Scientific Method (next turn I think) followed by Biology.

Domestic situation:

I'll give the domestic update later in the turn along with screenshots as Elkad has yet to play his turn and I'm waiting for him. Highlights will include:
- The road to Mali under construction
- Capturing a barb city
- Settling a new filler city
- Reconfiguring The Courthouse to pop to its 3rd ring next turn.

[shadyforce]

T175 Domestic report:

Here is the project to road towards Daniel. This turn I moved off the jungle which puts me at a little risk but at least I have an escort! Daniel doesn't even have that. Note that the road opens up the chance of a quick strike against Imhotep who currently has 1 Cat, 1 Impi and 1 WE (if I recall correctly) in Thangorodrim.


Last turn I had killed the first of 2 Longbow in the barb city with my Rifle and this turn I have a Cannon to help the now weakened Rifle finish the job:




I renamed this city 'The Airport'. I have 1 forest pre-chopped and I just moved to the forest/hill to start another chop to get infra up quickly. I think I'll go Theatre first and try and take back that Rice tile. I'll probably chop and mine the hills but lumbermill the rest of the forests. I think it's a bit late to be planting cottages and I reckon that hammer cities from here on will do a decent job even if I have to have them build wealth/research.

I also planted my next city in a filler spot location but with a Banana resource and plenty of green tiles and coast to work (This city has been named 'The Monument'):


Finally, here is me micro-ing The Courthouse to pop to its 3rd border next turn:

[shadyforce]

Sorry guys, it's about time I weigh in and let the lurkers know my opinions on the recent game developments. Here is an email I sent to my buddies Daniel and Kodii, which accuraterly reflects my thoughts during the planning phase where Rego was still in negotiations:

[Kodii asks us whether we want him to give up Urumqi for the sake of appeasing Broker to let this plan go ahead]

No, I don't think you should give up Urumqi.

I'm extremely sceptical about this plan. I'm amazed that Lins, Broker and Munro are even considering it. And logistically I can't really see it working. (This much I have told to Rego also).

Between the 3 of us:

I agree than Exploit is not the runaway threat that Rego thinks (or claims) he is. This plan benefits Rego far more than any of the rest of us. I think Exploit, Rego, Daniel and Broker are the 4 most likely winners of this game. And long term, I think that Exploit and Rego being locked into opposing sides is a valuable asset for us. Anything that would see one of those eliminated would see the other racing away with the game. Unfortunately we can't really touch Broker which is a shame because his elimination would not have any major downsides.

Also think that the fear about Exploit destroying Rego or Sunrise is exaggerated. As well as the defenders natural advantage of being able to use cannons first, Sunrise and Rego will soon have Machine Guns behind city walls and railroad assistes reinforcements to further add to their advantage. And we are mentaining, if not extending, our tech advantage.

To be honest, the only thing that bothers me about the status quo is that Kodii is suffering but if you think that you can hold what you have and the alternative is to lose more ground then I don't see why we should change.

Also, here is a section from a chat I had with Rego shortly just before the resumption of the game on new year's eve:

me: though one thing still bothers me which I'm going to share with you: in Lins/Brroker/Munro/Imho shoes, I would never ever agree to this move unless I was virtually certain of a significant shake-up in the alliance structure after exploit is dealt with
Dan: meaning that we just don't go back to the current alliances where they are just minus exploit?
me: well if they thought that's what would happen then killing off exploit means their alliance has no hope of catching us
Dan: i see what you're saying
me: so they must be fairly sure that that's not going to happen in order to agree with this plan
but I don't see why they should be so sure about this
Dan: i think it's unlikely - i see something like you me daniel sunrise broker team up
and knock out the "deadwood" civs
but it's hard to tell
the impression i'm getting out of broker is that he can tell that exploit is likely to ditch them once it becomes expedient
which is also the impression that he has given me
(he - exploit)
me: yeah, that's craziness
that exploit would ditch broker/munro/etc any time soon given the threat that our alliance poses,and that broker would believe thjat
Dan: i believe it
not that exploit would ditch it to go solo
but that he might team up with us
or some combination of it
that is the MO that exploit has been indicating to me
me: that might have been a valid fear were his civ not called 'Destroy Rego'
Dan: that he just looks to willow folks down at each age
i think that he was somewhat close to teaming up with us
i think he would team up with us / me if i agreeed to his demands
which i won't
because they're crazy
me: I guess I'm just underestimatinghow much everyone fears / mistrusts exploit
Dan: yeah
maybe because you're all the way around the world
haven't dealt with him much
okay i gotta run here (and play wii :-D) but i will email broker with the gist of what we talked about
and see if he will take a ceasefire
and confirm where the lins might stand
me: enjoy the wii!

I've just read through Exploit's post in the public forum and I want to go on record as saying that he is absolutely right. This is a crazy move for everyone. Rego is by far the biggest benefactor of this move. However, I'm not sure how I can stop this runaway train. I need Rego for Railroad and also he gets 10 turns of notice for any allegience switch. I would need Daniel and Kodii on board and even then, we'd be up against it. Fighting a war against Rego would not be fun due to our precarious border and his strong culture. And also, Sunrise's gpt income is a huge research asset that is tied to Rego pretty much.

I think the best play for me is to just play along with this and see how it plays out. Assuming success, Rego will be the new bookies favourite (if he wasn't already) and the other factions probably don't trust Rego that much so hopefully that can be used to our advantage. If my threesome came to blows with Rego/Sunrise and Broker/Lins as the next biggest 'faction' had to choose a side, I sort of expect them to choose ours.

It is certainly a worry of mine that Rego has already done a deal with Broker/Lins (and maybe Munro and/or Elkad as well) to turn on me once Exploit is dealt with. That's the only thing that kinda makes sense to convince them to kill Exploit now. But my gut says that is not the case.

I guess the only explanation left is that they genuinely believe that Exploit is such a big threat and needs to be dealt with now. And if that's the case then Rego deserves another big shiny diplomatic medal.