[SPOILERS] - social distancing with pindicator

[vanrober]

I've not declared war once.
I've been at war since turn 37.

I'm pissed off and this isn't fun any more

wait, I did declare on Gira because he was pink dotting me. Well, he started the hostility and then wouldn't take peace

you declared on mjmd to take some workers and stuff isnt it?

[pindicator]

That's true, Mjmd had an unescorted settler and worker in our border area and I sniped it. Then I gave him peace and paid him like a fool.

And yes, turn 37 vanrober & Gira tried to pink dot me. I had a warrior nearby and declared, moving my warrior right next to the settler so they couldn't settle. They then never gave me peace and instead sent warriors to choke my city. So when I got to Numids, despite wanting to go after superdeath I felt like i had to take care of Gira and vanrober otherwise it would be a 2v1. Superdeath stabbed me the moment my army was out of my borders. If that sounds familiar it's because the exact same thing has happened again: I wanted to go after Mjmd but felt like I had to take care of superdeath otherwise he would stab me in the back and now that my army is outside of my borders (I had tons of whipped knights in my core up until 1 or 2 turns ago) Mjmd has stabbed me and its a 2v1.

These guys have impeccable timing.

And honestly it just makes me so angry. I feel like I have a target on my back. Actually, it reminds me of playing board games my dad. When we'd play settlers of catan as a family whenever someone had a choice dad would say "Pindicator's winning, block him." And he'd say this every time, even when it wasn't true. It got to be such a reflex that one time we were playing and I was in last place with 3 or 4 points while everyone else had 7 or 8 and someone rolls a 7, so of course he says "Pindicator's winning, block him" and my brother did because it had been repeated so much that it was just accepted as fact. Now it's a family joke because I got upset at that one and called them all out on it. But that's what this game is starting to feel like: pindicator's the vet, he must be winning. Pindicator isn't winning. Pindicator hasn't won a game since ... since his first game? I mean, Noble and I had that PBEM where I didn't finish, but what have I won? Where is this reputation from? But it keeps getting repeated that somehow I'm a good player yet I always seem to find myself in losing situations like this.

I can't bring myself to open that save and look at what Mjmd is doing: whether it's a full-blown invasion or an opportunistic snipe of a city. I know if I do I'm just going to get even angrier when I see it. When I figure I've calmed down enough to look at it then I will.

[Kurumi]

Holy smokes. Mjmd's preemptive attack surely makes sense for them, I guess we have to hope Cairo uses this opportunity not to dogpile, but to attack Mjmd which of course is the best course of action but who knows. If Jowy and Cairo were to jump on Mjmd it'd be a very different situation. Is it possible? What are the current wars?

And your reputation has to be a factor, I'd say that the current game reputation (being at war since the very beginning, killing the first person in-game, not folding to an attack and seemingly coming out of top) combined with overestimating your position is how Mjmd came to this decision. And of course, it just makes sense.

[pindicator]

157 and Pre 158

Last night I squeezed the turn in during the 30 minutes i had between superdeath playing and my cousin visiting from Alaska.  (Which by the way was fantastic:  steaks on the charcoal grill, potatoes with kale, and fried asparagus with tomatoes.  Dessert was grilled peaches with ice cream drizzled in honey.  This cousin is the one who owns the house I'm renting, which is why the special treatment.
That and we just get along really well.)

In any case, I forgot to save my notes and then the computer froze when I went to get to it after she left for my aunt and uncle's, and so I just have screenshots which are redundant after what i opened the turn up to.  So the short version is I had moved up a stack of 5 knights against Superdeath's newest city on my border and found it defended only by a single archer.  Then the rest of the 2nd wave of knights were put 3 tiles SE of the main stack so that they could move in when I was ready to throw down but were still in my territory.  And thank goodness I did that instead of moving everything into Superdeath's territory!

I also lost my FIN counting from last turn but we'll try to reconstruct that when I finish the turn tonight.

Oh, and there was the funny bit of Jowy switching to Mercantilism the turn after we agreed to open borders.  Jowy really has over-valued just what his trade routes give to me all game!


All right, let's see the damage...

By Lake:




Currently I have 2 archers inside Lake and can whip a longbow this turn.
The worst part of this is that my great person is due out of Lake end of this turn.  I guess worse would be him being born and then being killed.  But this is the second time this game a city that has almost put out a great person for me has been killed (Coos was at 66/100 or thereabouts on what would have been my holy city shrine when superdeath took it the first time).

I think I should stop trying for great people in border cities.  Lesson learned emphatically.


And down south by Harney:




Thank you so much Mjmd for 1) splitting your attack and 2) putting most of your forces south away from my core.  Unfortunately for you the southern stack is closer to my forces.


And just so he doesn't feel left out, here's Superdeath continuing to build back within Boil It:




I gave up on my new color scheme and switched back to blue = good, red = bad.  Trying to get colors near each players color just made things blend in too much, and now that I'm fighting 2 purple civs at the same time things are only going to get worse.

I'll have to think on this some more, but aside from the pain of losing out on a city with 192/200 put into its next great person, this looks very doable.  I'll upgrade the archers at Lake into Longbows and whip a third, so that Mjmd should lose at least 2 knights taking that city.  Down south the Combat 2 knight makes attacking out with my war elephant a bad idea (11.2 v 12.0 strength), so hopefully he'll lose 2 knights there as well:  the longbow will defend at something like 16 strength thanks to the walls and being on a hill, which if I'm right is 20% odds for the C2 knight and 10% odds for the C1 knights.

And to put it all together in one big image to help give an idea of how the different theaters tie in together:

I put my notes on this one as well and the basic plan that's coming to mind.  Green and blue is just to put the different theaters in my mind visually and to show which cities will defend which direction: green goes to Lake and blue goes south to Belisarius. I'll whip everything I can next turn and whip all the others the turn after. The chop on the island will give +13 hammers to Curry and so that city will be able to whip out a longbow when it grows - although it takes 3 turns to grow there so it just may be too slow to do anything. Still, remember how I said I'd love it if someone would burn this city for me?

Superdeath emptied Baghdad so I'll take it and I need to decide if I burn or keep it.  I might keep it and move the longbow nearby to it just to make him commit units to retaking it (if he wants to).  The knights that aren't part of the superdeath stack then all go south.  There's 12 of them (plus the knight that will have to take Baghdad, which will be a turn behind) and then another knight comes out of Belisarius at end of turn.

What I think happens down here is that if Mjmd pushes everything in this turn he'll take t159 Harney at cost of 1 or 2 knights and then his mounted will move up to the gold mine and see Belisarius with its sole knight.  He will be able to take Belisarius on t160 but then I'll have 12 knights ready to counter and his slow stack will be a turn behind.  If he sits back and waits for his slow stack then I'll have half a dozen catapults coming down which will help me kill off his stack.  If he instead moves his knights past Harney and moves the slow units up to take that city we're back to the first scenario where my knights should take out his 2-movers by the time they get to Belisarius.

So it is not nearly as bad as I thought it would be.  If he had put all of this in one attack and just gone one direction I might have more trouble.  Wish I had a few more units in my border cities (which I was in the middle of building but timing this game just has not been with me).

If he takes Harney and Lake and asks for peace do I give it to him?  That's a question.  Do I pull units out of the main stack by Boil It?  That's another.  Right now I'm leaning no and no.

[scooter]

Condolences on the tough circumstances, and good luck!

[Commodore]

And honestly it just makes me so angry.  I feel like I have a target on my back.  Actually, it reminds me of playing board games my dad.  When we'd play settlers of catan as a family whenever someone had a choice dad would say "Pindicator's winning, block him."  And he'd say this every time, even when it wasn't true.  It got to be such a reflex that one time we were playing and I was in last place with 3 or 4 points while everyone else had 7 or 8 and someone rolls a 7, so of course he says "Pindicator's winning, block him" and my brother did because it had been repeated so much that it was just accepted as fact.  Now it's a family joke because I got upset at that one and called them all out on it.  But that's what this game is starting to feel like:  pindicator's the vet, he must be winning.  Pindicator isn't winning.  Pindicator hasn't won a game since ... since his first game?  I mean, Noble and I had that PBEM where I didn't finish, but what have I won?  Where is this reputation from?  But it keeps getting repeated that somehow I'm a good player yet I always seem to find myself in losing situations like this.

Two things:
First, I am so sorry. Your father and your brother should be calling you by your given Christian name, as is your right. So messed up they call you Pindicator.

Second, same thing always happened to me playing RISK with all my buddies in college. I just learned how to be better at aggression, cripple one, block another, eat the third. I trusted my luck and my poor buddies started to fear my luck too. And I won most dogpile RISK games.   Be of good cheer, this is your chance to be even more badass.

[NobleHelium]

4 turns is a long time. I don't think pulling back the units from Superdeath is going to do anything.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

And honestly it just makes me so angry.  I feel like I have a target on my back.  Actually, it reminds me of playing board games my dad.  When we'd play settlers of catan as a family whenever someone had a choice dad would say "Pindicator's winning, block him."  And he'd say this every time, even when it wasn't true.  It got to be such a reflex that one time we were playing and I was in last place with 3 or 4 points while everyone else had 7 or 8 and someone rolls a 7, so of course he says "Pindicator's winning, block him" and my brother did because it had been repeated so much that it was just accepted as fact.  Now it's a family joke because I got upset at that one and called them all out on it.  But that's what this game is starting to feel like:  pindicator's the vet, he must be winning.  Pindicator isn't winning.  Pindicator hasn't won a game since ... since his first game?  I mean, Noble and I had that PBEM where I didn't finish, but what have I won?  Where is this reputation from?  But it keeps getting repeated that somehow I'm a good player yet I always seem to find myself in losing situations like this.

My AP econ teacher in high school would boom across the table "**** is WINNING" every single time the robber got played. It kept the end of the school year fun...

These are attacks are unfortunate, but if its any consolation, your thread has been probably one of the best I've read recently, and I hope you keep pushing to victory!

How fast did SD recover those units?

[pindicator]

Condolences on the tough circumstances, and good luck!

Two things:
First, I am so sorry. Your father and your brother should be calling you by your given Christian name, as is your right. So messed up they call you Pindicator.

Second, same thing always happened to me playing RISK with all my buddies in college. I just learned how to be better at aggression, cripple one, block another, eat the third. I trusted my luck and my poor buddies started to fear my luck too. And I won most dogpile RISK games.   Be of good cheer, this is your chance to be even more badass.

Thanks for the support guys.  I'm definitely feeling better about it knowing I have some options for defending.  I was fearing a stack of something like 20 two-movers, which wouldn't have been far off if he had kept all his horchers and knights together.  (Or perhaps he could have sent the one-movers in one direction and the two-movers in another.)  Seeing that at worst he should get Harney and Lake ... I can live with that.  Hopefully he doesn't burn Belisarius...  Even better: I might be able to kill a lot of his knights, which would be huge for me.

As far as trusting luck, I will add that every time I have tried to trust luck and go in on someone I've been punished!  My luck sucks!

4 turns is a long time.  I don't think pulling back the units from Superdeath is going to do anything.

Yeah, and with no more units coming into that stack now I don't think I should pull anything away from it in case it gives superdeath an opening.  My goal here is to get peace with Mjmd for as little cost as possible and then turn back around and finish off superdeath before the enforced peace is up.

How fast did SD recover those units?

He's been adding several per turn rather steadily.  I'd guess he's regularly whipping and had some that were already coming down when I killed his first stack off.  Right now he's back up to 15 good hitters: 7 CKN and 8 pike.  However the CKN are bad defenders against knights.  I will probably need to heal up the catapults as well as bombard the defenses in his city before I can launch my attack.

[pindicator]

158

The turn went largely as I outlined above.  At Lake:




I whipped the longbow, spent 190g to upgrade both archers to longbows, and then swapped everything to make money since I don't expect the city to survive another turn.

I moved my axe back but I think I'm going to send him back into the forest next turn.  He does defend at 10 strength in the woods and that might be enough to take out a knight or another Mjmd unit if he's careless with his workers again.

Whipped everywhere.

There is a silver lining to not spawning my next Great Person at Lake.




Now Klamath is up and I've kept that city pretty close to 200 GP points as well.  Except Klamath has a considerably higher chance to spawn an engineer.  And an engineer to bulb Engineering would be huge, giving me extra movement and allowing pikes.  Right now I have nothing to counter knights: only bigger knights.  (Although what really does counter knights?) Next turn we'll add a scientist to get the great person by end of t160. As much as the percentage is important, speeding it up is even more so. Every turn is an eturnity.

I also swapped Klamath over to a knight because when the unit finishes it should be in range to hit Mjmd's southern force.




I decided to attack out with my War Elephant.  The reason being is that the combat formula is funny when the defender's bonuses don't outweigh the attack bonus vs a certain type of unit.  So attacking out with the war elephant was slightly better odds than playing defense, but even more important was that the difference between a C2 knight and a C1 knight going against the longbow on a hill in Harvey was 20% and 10%.  If I can improve the odds that the longbow can get a flawless kill and then possibly get several kills - that would be huge. What was even better was that the war elephant won, killing his only C2 knight.

Also, when I was scouting with my chariot through AT lands I stumbled across an Mjmd scout and killed it. Quite literally stumbled because I didn't realize it was there when i moved to the tile and next thing I knew there was a pop-up saying I had killed it.

I realized that there's nothing I can do for Curry.  Once Belisarius falls then because Klamath's culture doesn't extend out to the southern coast he'll be able to run a unit straight to Curry before it can grow to 2 and whip a defender.  So it is building wealth for me.

And last thing:




I burned Beijing.


PRO: 43 & 43 (2483)
FIN: 52 & 50 (2322)