[Spoilers] Fintourist and Old Harry have nothing to see here

[Old Harry]

Finally I'm appreciated for the... um... you know. It's not skill - the other thing. Wit? Er... Rambling?

Turn 269

Our Fighter gets its first interception and our first 18XP Infantry rolls off the production line at Jamestown. We're making 137 hammers there so it'll be one per turn for a little while. They're going to live in Light Brigade as that gives the most options for commando attack at the moment.


In the north west we have two fleets poised to hit Thebes and Hero's Passing for XP farming. I'm going to have to wait until 2Metra's played next turn to avoid another three-way turn split. I don't want to post in the tech thread asking for a pause though because he's likely to interpret it as a reason for him not to play .


In the far west we have a boat of Amphi Inf and one full of 14 and 16 XP Inf. Knossos is the target at present, but that could change if 2Metra moves his forces.


I thought the sudden dip in our power was losing all those Artillery and MGs, but part of it would be gifting stuff to Commodore too . William just started drafting hard, possibly in response to plako's spike.

[suttree]

ORIGINAL CONTENT (of a sorts) for Team Badass:

OLD HARRY BALLS IS THE ONE!

[Old Harry]

[spacetyrantxenu]

Nice one, Suttree.

[Old Harry]

2MetraNinja hasn't played yet. I'm going to declare on him this turn but we're already second in turn order to dtay.

So do we:
1. Muck about with the timer for the good of the game (ie wait until he plays by asking for a pause or something and then declare once he has played)
2. Just play in my slot and kill the turn speed until we sign peace again
3. Play in my slot then PM 2Metra asking him to double-move me (I'm pretty sure that won't be a problem given that he has no boats)
4. Make peace with dtay
?

[Fintourist]

I vote 1 or 3!

Looking forward to XP hunt

[Old Harry]

He played! Here comes the hammer...

[Old Harry]

Turn 270

Wow! Dtay came after Endor and got his arse handed to him! That's twelve dead Commando Infantry and four about to become dead. He's got six more in South City and one just hanging out on our border (I don't know why) so he perhaps realised he couldn't take the city a little too late... I'm a bit annoyed that all our near-commando units are miles away and can't take advantage of the XP gathering prospect . 23 Commando Infantry is just remarkable though good work mr tay!


First job is to clean up the remainder... with no air support (all off preparing to hit 2MN) we might as well use:
Flanking II Cav vs C4 Inf - 59% withdrawal chance - LOSS but 6 (six!) hits.


C1 Pinch Inf vs 14.0 C4 Inf - 87% - WIN with 3 hits and +2XP
C2 Cav vs 10.4 C4 Inf - 85% - WIN with 1 hit and +3XP
C2 Cuir vs 4.0 Inf - 99% - WIN gets him to 17XP
C1 Pinch Inf vs 3.2 Inf - 99% - WIN
I captured his workers and didn't delete them (I don't think he can get them out next turn if he recaptures).


F2 cuir vs C4 Inf - 45% withdrawal - withdraws without getting a hit in
C1 Pinch Inf vs C4 Inf - 35% - WINS with 2 hits!

So that's tidy over there, we'll declare on 2Metra now. Hang on, he just got Assembly line... We really should try and wipe him out before he starts using it!


And he's even up to his old boats in forts tricks...


Right, so I sent six airships to knock down the Infantry in Thebes, then:


C2 Amphi Inf vs C1 G1 Inf - 48% - LOSS without a hit
C2 Amphi Inf vs C1 G1 Inf - 48% - LOSS without a hit
C2 Amphi Inf vs C1 G1 Inf - 48% - WIN - 2 hits but up to 11XP
C2 Amphi Inf vs C2 Inf - 52% - WIN - 2 hits but up to 10XP
C2 Amphi Inf vs C1 Inf - 56% - LOSS - 4 hits though

Next one of our Commando candidates - only C2 because then he gets the 3XP to take him to 17:


C2 Inf vs Cannon - 78% - WIN - 4 hits but 17XP
C2 Inf vs Cannon - 78% - WIN - 3 hits and 17XP
C2 Inf vs Cannon - 78% - WIN - 4 hits but 17XP

Then they need to be C1 to get 3XP from the Knights:

C1 Inf vs C2 Knight - 77% - WIN - 1 hit and 17XP
C1 Inf vs C2 Knight - 77% - WIN - 5 hits and 17XP
C1 Inf vs C2 Knight - 77% - WIN - 2 hits and 17XP

Now there are just Cats to kill:
C4 Inf vs Cat - 99% - WIN - 1 hit and 17XP
C4 Inf vs Cat - 99% - WIN - 1 hit and 15XP
C2 Amphi Cav vs Cat - 99% - WIN
C2 Amphi Cav vs Cat - 99% - WIN

Next up is Knossos - first an Amphi Inf tries to clear the top defender:


C2 Amphi Inf vs 11.9 C1 Pinch Rifle - 74% - WIN - 2 hits
C2 Inf vs C1 Pike - 98% - WIN - 2 hits - 16XP
C2 Inf vs C1 Pike - 98% - WIN - 1 hit - 16XP
C2 Inf vs C1 Pike - 98% - WIN - 0 hits - 16XP
C3 Inf vs C1 Pike - 99% - WIN - 5 hits - 17XP
C1 Inf vs War Ele - 99% - WIN

Then, before we kill Knossos lets look at Hero's passing - these two boats could have just killed cats up north, but I thought it'd be nice to do a bit more damage:


C2 Pinch Amphi Inf vs 11.8 C1 Pinch Rifle - 97% - WIN
C2 Pinch Amphi Inf vs 11.8 C1 Pinch Rifle - 97% - WIN
C2 Amphi Inf vs 11.8 C1 Pinch Rifle - 89% - WIN and 10XP
C2 Amphi Inf vs War Ele - 99% - WIN
C2 Amphi Inf vs HA - 99% - WIN

Now the question is: Do we burn the two cities or ask 2Metra for peace or both? If we don't burn them he's likely to think we just declare-peaced him and won't realise we farmed him until too late.

There are 12 hours still left on the clock so I'll come back to this in the morning!

[Fintourist]

&

That's a very nice defensive victory against dtay. Was RNG favorable to us or did dtay just overestimate his odds (because that wasn't even too close to succeeding)? Anyways, getting so many enemy commandos out of the board without losing a fight/city is just great.

And happy to see 2metra-XP-farming working decently as well. I have no strong feelings about how to deal with him now, city capture gold isn't really significant and the production power of those two cities isn't really either. One further option would be to take those cities, but return them as part of the peace deal, but maybe just leaving them with one defender is the most solid option. Perhaps 2metra sees that we just wanted to help him get rid of some unit costs?

Getting so many new commando infantries is really nice. I was wondering if we could use them already next turn and burn some of 2metras core cities, but those will have usage elsewhere too.. Apart from capitalizing on any dtay openings those commandos will very likely be the no.1 method of making warring with us painful if ever end up fighting with mack again.

When will we have 50 commando infantries ready? I also wondered if we could surprise WilliamLP with a commando strike and burn ~10 cities? Just for the sake of scoreboard..

PS. And nice work suttree

[Old Harry]

Turn 270 fin

I'm feeling indecisive... But in the end I think it's more value to us to have peace with 2mn, so I didn't burn the cities, I offered peace with our map instead.

Our Merchant got us 2300 gold, meaning we can get Rocketry easily.


And finally I'm thinking of settling a city here, or 1N of the sign to prevent dtay resettling and popping his borders back out. Any thoughts? Also we've got ten Commandos now, and we gain 1 per turn for the forseeable future, so we could aim for Ishval...