[Spoilers] Bacchus debuts on RB showing unmatched vision and slick dice-rolling

[Bacchus]

Are you ready, hey, are you ready for this
Are you hangin' on the edge of your seat?

Well, funnily I didn't really fuck up yesterday, but it hardly matters as:


A real problem is these pre-construction rivers, and I'm paying again for going MC first (and all for nothing). Because they take the full turn off the infantry, it makes it really difficult to position the troops properly for zone defense. And I just don't have that many, when all is said and done. The west city can face the hideous entirety of the coming cavalry wave with just 4 spears. There's 40% defense, but 1 HA is still enough to render the spear pretty useless for future combat, and there are a disgusting 8 HA's in total, then chariots. Fortunately, with 40% defense axes have odds on HA's too and there aren't any catapults. Whatever happens though, William will be able to move in and clean-up, so he is the real winner.

I have to say I understand retep here, and I'm going to give him the best fight I can. Ultimately, it was a toss-up between William getting his game trashed by a HA stack, or me, and one can hardly bear a grudge against being on the bad end of a coin-flip. So some whipping into the ground is going to happen, yuppie! If I'm still standing afterwards, Numidians will get into the action.

[Ceiliazul]

I have to say I understand retep here, and I'm going to gibe him the best fight I can. Ultimately, it was a toss-up between William getting his game trashed by a HA stack, or me, and one can hardly bear a grudge against being on the bad end of a coin-flip. So some whipping into the ground is going to happen, yuppie! If I'm still standing afterwards, Numidians will get into the action.

Good sport Bacchus, sorry to see your plans ruined.

Whipping for the win! moral victory!

[Bacchus]

I'd say this is a nice and rough first proper MP game: plenty of space to make mistakes, plenty mistakes made, various peculiarities of playing with non-AI opponents brought strongly to the fore, I'm enjoying it quite a bit. The only thing I'm really regretting is not logging out a couple of times early into the game, which probably made a hideous impression

Also, I'm about to settle my island!

[Bacchus]

The non-war contributing part of the empire:



I guess an explanation is in order for why there even is a non-war-contributing part of the empire at this stage, but it's simple -- nothing built here will get anywhere in time to help with defense or counter-attacks. With the exception of Double Star which will actually build/whip Numidians starting next turn. It's really annoying that chariots don't upgrade into HA's, I could have used the hammer-conversion trick. Also, the forge in the capital is not actually being built.

Yeah, Carthage is working an unimproved banana for the 5 turns before it gets a netted fish, I don't have an excuse. Apropos, the jungle settlement following Dhalpir's plant now that I won't have the army to move this border, will be right on the western Banana.

[Ceiliazul]

I see 21 units inbound, how many will you have on defense in, say, 2t?

[Bacchus]

I will have 7 spears, 8 axes, 3 chariots and 2 archers on the theatre, which is woefully inadequate due to his forking abilities. Still, at least the chariots can do some minor damage against HA's. It's the spear count that's particularly bad, I can't have enough in both places, moreover it's too late even to move the three that are in the west to bolster the east.

My general expectation, which is highly dependant on his own tactics, is that he will raze both of my northern cities and ran out of steam. There is some play that can be had, especially if he is overambitious with 2-movers, but it's a pretty dire position for my north. Which, incidentally, brings most of my commerce. Overall, my greatest hope is that William wiill move to attack as soon as their own peace treaty expires -- and it would be a logical thing for him to do, as he sees retep's power plunge (which it will, one way or another).

P.S. I will have 3 Numidians, but only in time to counter-attack, in 3t, if maths is right. 2 of those will be going out of barracks. A big decision is basically how many troops to leave in garrison to inflict damage and how many to hold back for counter-attacking.

[Bacchus]

Ichabod is earning 99 gold per turn. I got 24

[Bacchus]

Retep left a chariot alone withing striking distance of mine three, including a C2 one. Result? Diisaster! The C2 withdrew dealing hardly any damage. Rather than delete it, I left it in the way, in the vain hope that retep will use up his attack action on it with one of the units. I then killed off the 3.4 chariot with a C1 one of mine, and moved a healthy one to protect. Again, he might bite -- in any case, they are close enough to counter-attack, if decides to take on the city. It's 5 HAs and 4 chariots versus 3 spears and 4 axes. Not great. My best chance is that spears get damaged just enough to make way for axes as defenders. ALso, for some reason retep moved such that he can't attack with two-movers from both stacks this turn. I'll take it.

[Bacchus]

Wow, after building the Collosus into a largely land-based empire, mostly_harmless built Shwedaigin Paya. He doesn't have a religion. Retep also did something peculiar, namely he spent another turn not attacking, so now I have 4 spears in each border city with 40% culture and at least 10% reinforcement to his 8 horse archers AND 4 axes to his 6 axes. He also did not waste time killing my withdrawn chariot, which converted it's 10/10 XP into C2-Formation, whilst the C1 chariot that actually did the killing picked up medic. Both withdrew to the eastern city and will have at least one turn to heal. Also, this turn 2 Numidian Cavalry complete in Barracked cities, and next turn another one completes. Overall, he should prepare for some pain.

Here is the tactical situation:


And here are some graphs:




Note that my power graph is boosted by having IW and MC over retep. Mine and William's GNP graphs are an embarassment (he has Buddhism+plenty of spreads, remember), which tell exactly what our prospects are in this game. What's particularly sad is for how long our GNP was actually competitive -- it's the necessity to rack up the army for this current war that really killed our chances.

He's CY, just for info:


This one is particularly painful for me -- you can clearly see that last chance I had of catching up to the pack, if not the leaders, with my expansion, and the ruination of that chance by the triple Dhalpir-William-Retep fiasco. Albeit, I actually have to be grateful to Dhalpir, he got me mobilizing my troops with just that extra bit of haste, which greatly increased my survival chances.

In other news, Plako researched Alphabet to clear the Philo bulb, and offered open borders. Gladly accepted for his IC TR trade routes, to which I will add with my own little island.

[Bacchus]

So, as I said, how this war turns out will depend a lot on retep's tactics. Now that we've seen these, I'm pretty sure that all he can do is raze 1 city and lose the remaining army to a counter-attack. He really should not have bothered wasting time in joining stack, but hit with two-movers as soon as he could and when he had reasonable odds of fighting through a very thin contingent of just 2 spears (or was it 3?).

His most exciting play right now is probably to go for the capital. Pure spite, sure, but then again this war isn't achieving anything in any case. I would have liked to see scooter, mackoti and plako play out respectively retep's, mine and William's position, I have to say.