[PB22 Spoiler] Joey and Borsche puke on the funny pages

[GermanJoey]

T156.

Whew, had to play my turns in a hurry before work this morning, did not have time to take pictures or even really check all my micro. A brief report... my REMAI front now looks completely solid. Adrien didn't want the reload either, meaning that's a bunch of extra ancient trash I can stuff in that city. I upgraded 3 Numids to Knights and an archer to Longbow, and I'll have a total of 36 units stuffed in the city next turn, upped from the 21 there this turn. If he attacks, he'll get completely wiped. By the way, if Adrien had attacked T154, second half, I'd still have 10 of these extra 16, but not the extra 5 I produced last turn and the Knight coming out in 3CD this turn.

On the Furungy front, things look to be swinging away from me. I razed that dangerous village this turn, protecting Uppsala from a fork, but Furungy's stack is now looking pretty strong, with IIRC 9 Knights, a Berserker, 2 pikes, and 2 longbows. He has the chance to attack out and I did not have the chance to sim how it will go. I protected my Knight stack with 3 swords; we'll see if that's enough to stop the pikes. I've got some longbows and a pike on the way to reinforce, but they're still a few turns out. The galley was missing from the city, so I've gotta be careful of any shenanigans there. I think I've gotta squeeze peace outta him somehow... perhaps send my Navy past Nidaros and threaten to raze his flank. It is far too dangerous to advance on Nidaros directly until I can get many more reinforcements in place. If his stack gets any bigger, I'll need to consider retreating from Uppsala... perhaps it would have been better to raze it. Damn. Maybe he'll raze it for me? You know, if I had fiendishly tried to take the first half of the timer as I originally planned (or that monument had not popped borders on the turn I went to attack) I coulda razed Nidaros 3 turns ago. Well, so it goes, there's a reason we have rules in place, and that which damns me on one end saves me on another.

Globally, dtay switched back into Slavery, and I'm back down to -62 CY on him. I got his graphs this turn and they're a bit depressing; he's closer to me in MFG than I thought, and his GNP is insane in this GA. His power is like, less than half of mine, meaning his infrastructure is, by this point, likely way better than mine. I hit 817k power this turn, 108k over my next nearest rival of Gavagai. I hope REMAI attacks out, wiping their stack for hardly any loss or WW would mean I could easily take all of their land and yet still reinforce my Furungy front at the same time. I only had about a minute to look, and I don't remember anything else particularly interesting.

My galley killed a barb galley and settled one settler. I just realized I forgot to set an artist in that new city, I think. =/ Well, whatever, I barely made it to my meeting this morning on time as it is, heh.

[GermanJoey]

T157, part 1.

Furungy seems like he wants to be the last to play again, not realizing that two civs have to play after him, so I sent a PM to Adrien, REM, and Furungy, and told them I will play half of my turn. Since my empire is basically segmented into two completely separate halves (with the 3-move roads from Engineering uniting my "northern" and "central" cores much more solidly), I played the turn for all units in my "central core" (my main continent, from GoatKCD upwards) and microed all cities, but did not touch any unit on or near the continent I share with Furungy; I'll move them after he plays. Thus, REMAI can play tonight without waiting an entire extra day for Furungy to play.

At any rate, I wouldn't be able to play a full turn until tomorrow night either, but, after doing most of the busy work tonight, perhaps I can play in 5 minutes tomorrow morning if nothing happens on the Furungy front. In that case, I'm planning to just move all land units back into to Uppsala and only advance forward with my ships, as his stack in Nidaros is now too big to move in on directly. Gotta hand it to the man, he whipped HARD. Perhaps, if he attacks out and whiffs, I can do something, but otherwise I think I'm stuck over there until this situation with Korea resolves. I offered Furungy a white peace, although I doubt he'll take it until I start getting feisty on the sea.

Here's my stack in 3CD:




I've now got 36 units stuffed in there, staring in the face of a stack of 37 units. I have bigger and stronger units, (Knights, Longbows, and Macemen with 3 and 4 promotions), but, unfortunately, I still can't attack out because I don't have enough catapults. It could work but the result would just be too... random. The fact that I have stronger units is a moot point if REMAI have counter-units acting as selective stack defenders. For example, they have two C2S pikes in the stack, meaning my Knights, which otherwise obliterate everything else in that stack, only get 33% odds on the attack. I can't get rid of the pikemen without sacrificing a few Knights (or WE), which is not really a good trade and there's not even any guarantee on it.

That's where cats should come in. The biggest advantage of collateral here is that it *can* damage those selective defenders without needing for them to be the top defender. However, cats hitting a stack containing lots of cats is a problem because the algorithm that chooses which units that get hit by a collateral attack does not ignore units that take no damage damage at all from collateral... such as catapults or units that are already under 50% health. (in RtR mod, 25% in base BTS) For example, if I hit a stack with a barrage II cat, I would normally expect the top defender to take hits from the cat directly, and then another 7 units to get hit with collateral damage. However, if the stack is 1/3 catapults (as REMAI's stack is), then I should only expect 4 collateral hits on average, because there's a 33% chance per collateral hit of the algorithm choosing a catapult. And, ya know, that's random - I could get 0 total collateral hits, I could get 6. The odds say that I should expect 4, but, if you look at our last big battle, I had one that was 0. Thus with 6 cats that's only an average of 24 collateral hits on 24 hitters, a simply terrible result. One hit a piece, if I'm lucky. Some units will get 2 or 3 hits and many units will likely not get scratched at all. And, in particular, if the pikes don't get damaged thent I'm completely wasting units. I don't need cats to kill any other unit but I'll still need to sacrifice Knights to kill the pikes.

On the other hand, my sims indicate that I now have more than enough units to absorb any kind of collateral he throws at me, whether they bombard first or attack immediately. If they attack the city, with their stack as it is, there's a good chance that I might not lose a single unit while their stack is completely wiped. I think this is what will happen; they did not take TBS's opportunity to call off the war, instead being hellbent on driving through the choke anyways.

Elsewhere, I refigured my HE to grow to size 15 next turn; it will produce 60 hammers to 1T a pike this turn, and then hit a stable configuration of 90hpt next turn. Nearby, I spotted Gavagai getting up to trouble:




I do not like what I see, no sir. Perhaps he saw my workers forting my jungle chokepoint below Dominic Deegan, and thought that hey, that's a really good idea, I think I'll do the same on my own choke. Or... he could be preparing to road down, in case my power dips, to take some land. Without more info, I think he's respecting my numbers, if nothing else... I'm at 845k soldiers this turn, still #1, compared to his 745k at #2. dtay's GA ended, and now the demos look a little more reasonable. Gawdzak settled a city 4-5 tiles above where I fought that barb galley. HAK offered to sell sugar at 9gpt, and I countered with Spices+Incense. If he refuses, I might re-offer 9gpt, we'll see. This has been news of the world with Walter Cronkite, thank you and good night.

[Krill]

However, cats hitting a stack containing lots of cats is a problem because the algorithm that chooses which units that get hit by a collateral attack does not ignore units that take no damage damage at all from collateral... such as catapults or units that are already under 50% health. (in RtR mod, 25% in base BTS)

What do you mean by this difference between RtR and abse BtS?

[GermanJoey]

However, cats hitting a stack containing lots of cats is a problem because the algorithm that chooses which units that get hit by a collateral attack does not ignore units that take no damage damage at all from collateral... such as catapults or units that are already under 50% health. (in RtR mod, 25% in base BTS)

What do you mean by this difference between RtR and abse BtS?

cats can collateral units down to 25% in base BTS, right? Only 50% in RtR; that's why my cats started only scoring a few collateral hits per attack (eventually down to none!) near the end of the cat-run of that last battle (the data is a few pages back), as they were 50% health or lower. It made a huge difference in the outcome, actually.

by the way, (this is a bit tangential, but since I discovered the behavior in the same sims that I'm thinking of w.r.t. the cats, I'm thinking of it now), but I think that when a horse unit does a flanking attack in RtR (that is to say, it retreats), it seems to do double flanking damage to seige units compared to a normal victory. When I did sims of that first big battle battle with Korea (where I attacked out), I had a couple sims where my Numids retreated twice instead of outright winning their battles. These were the only cases where I was able to kill any of REMAI's simulated Hwatchas via flanking alone. I suspect there might be an unguarded edge case in the code or something like that of RtR mod that lets flanking attacks do full damage.

[Krill]

No, I never made any such change in RtR; all siege units have a limit and cats have always been 50% in BtS IIRC. The Flanking change that exists should be that horse units do half flanking damage compared to base BtS.

[GermanJoey]

Hey, sorry my explanation was a bit confusing, especially since I used "flanking" multiple different ways there.

Ok, let's say we load up vanilla BTS, and use a horcher to attack a stack of 7 catapults. The horcher wins the fight and damages the other 6 catapults with x Flanking Damage. Now we load up RtR mod 2.7.0.1, do the same attack, the horcher still wins, but now does x/2 flanking damage to the other 6 cats. So far so good, right? Now, lets suppose the horcher retreats instead of winning the fight. In vanilla BTS, he will still do x flanking damage to the other 6 cats. Now we load up RtR; the horcher again retreats, but does x flanking damage instead of x/2 flanking damage. I think that's a bug, right? I think there might be some alternate path in the logic for retreating attacks as compared to victorious attacks that may perhaps call the same base "apply flanking damage" function, or whatever.

Regarding cats... I think you're mistaken. According to my memory, and this page, BTS cats can collateral down to 75%:

http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Collateral_damage

I can run a comparison sim when I get home from work to know for sure. I am at least very sure it is 50% in this version of RtR mod, and remember being surprised by that.

[GermanJoey]

158.

Furungy sent back the peace, thankfully. I've now got 9 extra turns to get reinforcements in place, just barely enough time to send troops via galley and across 24 road tiles, heh. Furungy still whipped himself down all over even after sending back the treaty.. I think his mind is on revenge. In response, I've got.... a plan.

I also popped the hut on the island of Vasteros, which I first spotted with a scouting workboat. I sent a map with its location to Furungy almost 100 turns ago. It popped a barb warrior into Furungy's borders, which then suicided onto the longbow he had defending the city the next turn.

The biggest reason for the treaty, of course, was to discourage Gavagai from dogpiling me. It's much more tempting to wardec on a guy already fighting on two other fronts than a guy fighting on just one. If he attacks now, I feel prepared. My jungle fort is finished next turn, with a few formation pikes already ready to stuff into it, and my HE is now in a stable size-15 90hpt configuration. I should be OK up there as long as mackoti doesn't get a sub. Gavagai did get Gunpowder this turn, the first one to do it, but that's really more of a defensive tech unless you have a musket-based UU or 200 CY to spare on drafts. He's not even close to Nationalism, so no worries I think.

HAK reoffered Sugar for 9gpt, and I accepted as I figure I'm about to hit some serious WW soon. Even with almost every luxury available to me, half of my cities are now ungarrisoned... I'm pushing pretty close to the happy cap all over the place.

On the 3CD front, REMAI added 2 Knights and a Pike to their big ass stack last turn (it now numbers 40 units total), and barraged down my cultural defense there to 0%. I'm up to 39 highly promoted units... hold on to your butts, boys, they'll be attacking this turn it looks like! I so, so, so hope they do... I popped a great prophet in my ToA city this turn, so perhaps this is a good omen that I'll soon be building my very own shrine?? The people of the Hindu faith desire (and deserve!) a strong, pious leader, IMHO...

Dtay offered a map trade while I was logged in, so I've finally gotten info to show Gawdzak on just how aggressively dtay is expanding towards him. Unfortunately, this might be a few turns too late, as the maps will now also show that I'm aggressively expanding towards him too. It looks like borders/zones of control will be trending like this over the next few dozen turns or so:




Essentially, I will have to deal with Furungy again at some point, having a high likelyhood of (eventually) muscling him over but, as Nidaros is 24 tiles from my capital, and a further 15 tiles from my HE, that will not be before dtay takes Furungy's entire undefended flank. All those cities on his eastern half had but a single unit, if any, before the war, and probably not even that now. Commodore will be able to control quite a bit of sea himself with his mighty Dutch East Indiamen, but I don't think he'll be able to project enough power for a long enough window to take complete control of dtay's island holdings before dtay gets Chemistry for Frigates. On top of that, plako is looking bigger and bigger... Commodore will have his hands full with him. Finally, Gawdzak is *just* starting to expand into this sea. He has... I think, 4 island cities total now? And just one in this sea. I have 11, dtay has 8, Commodore has 6 cities over here settled/conquered by galley, and even Furungy has 4. Gawdzak really undervalues naval control on a map like this... I've drawn in a white-dotted line on what I would have expected him to control now based on his T100 empire.

[GermanJoey]

only had a couple minutes before work, but I saw Adrien took over and hour to play and whipped a bunch so I just had to sneak in a peak.... and...









lost 3 of my least valuable units, while they lost 35. I got my third great general before they got their first!

I think its important for me to clear the remnants of his stack and the pair of knights behind it... I should probably spend 3 cats to collateral down the pikes and spears, and then perhaps some C2S Knights will be able to get good enough odds on the pikes? They've already spent their GG on a Super-Medic pike, located a few tiles behind that stack there; it would be nice to get that too, but I think its out of reach, only had a minute to look and I can't remember.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

[GermanJoey]

awww hell yes






Simmed that 3 cats would be enough, but that was with B2 cats, woops. Most of these guys here were built a long time ago. Used 5 C1 and got 95% odds on every attack.




Thought a while, and decided it was worth sacrificing some units to nail his super medic too. First Knight lost at 30% odds but did 5 hits, second Knight won w/ 32% odds. C3F1 5.4/6 health Pikeman then lost at 92% odds, but hey, that's karma baby. Even more important than the fact that units are right now way more important for them than me, losing the GG instantly should crush their morale.




Only 62 more XP until that all important 4th Agg GG. The way things are going, I'm gonna have 3 planted +WP + a military academy in my HE city before I get rifling... 1Ting Commando rifles, this is gonna be one hell of a ride, baby.

Gavagai appears to be up to shenanigans. He built Notre Dame, which is a lot of hammers towards a peaceable purpose, but has two more triremes stationed up here, presumably in response to my own. His worker on his jungle chokepoint put a turn into a workshop but... it could be a ruse. I would not be shocked to see a road there this turn instead. With my losses this turn, he closed the power gap to just 80k.