[SPOILERS] Bismarck of Mali (NobleHelium and Lewwyn)

[NobleHelium]

Re: caravels in the north, we should have stacked the new caravel on top of the damaged caravel and let the damaged caravel heal for a turn. Right now if he attacks our caravel at 40%ish odds and wins we might not be able to retaliate properly. I think the primary reason for him taking the 32% attack last time was because we didn't promote our caravel though, so he figured he needed to take the shot before the odds got worse. We have been a little sloppy about promoting, promoted units take less damage too, so saving it for the heal isn't always better.

But yeah in the south we are going to do a bit of a line formation rather than the standard stack of doom. Kuro can't attack out with any one unit efficiently, so we'll just take our time and pick off units one at a time while the other knight covers.

[Lewwyn]

Ellimist took a 32% shot on the caravel and won. Maybe it's just me but I don't think that's a big deal. We didn't even see the caravel before he attacked. And I'm not sure but it might have been promoted. His caravels are promoted from Theo. I really don't think we've been sloppy about promotions. I believe in saving promotions and I think its the smartest way to play. Now if I'm facing an obvious defense set up, then promote away. But the flexibility of promos outside of that situation is something I think is important. It's not just about the heal.

We're still winning.

[NobleHelium]

So our next GP is due next turn. We've got about 51% odds for an Engineer, 36% for a Prophet, and 13% for a Spy. Maybe we trade a Prophet to Jkaen for his shrine? If so, what should we ask for?

[NobleHelium]

Sigh. PYFT.

[Lewwyn]

Sigh. PYFT.

QFT.

[NobleHelium]

You should ask Ellimist what buttons we need to flip before he plays his turn.

[Lewwyn]

Last turn we left the game after forking Ellimist and forcing him to make some hard decisions. When we open the save we see his decision:



Ellimist has abandoned Formahault. He was able to kill a bunch of our units this turn too. Let's take a peak:



All of those odds are the odds he attacked at. We ended up losing 3 knights, 2LB and a caravel. The caravel is ridiculous. He attacked at 28% odds. Our caravel had C2 his had C1. What? Why would you do that, no less how did you win!? That's 2! 2 caravel battles he's won at low odds that he initiated.

As for the LBs, he saccrificed Axes at em, finished them off so that he could get to enearly dead knight that was under them. Then he used 2 pikes that he promoted to take the top off the big stack. Again he was getting lucky winning battles at 60% and 55% odds.

In the end though, that's not enough. We sacced a 2XP knight into the pike in Forma, then ran over the injured pike and archer to capture and raze the city. That was totally worth it. Here's a view:



We split his last two cities on the island and we've drawn pikes out of Antaras. Next turn we will stage the 5 maces, 3 Xbows and 3 Cats next to Antaras. 8 knights will be ready from south of Anataras. Anything that survives his counterattack in the north will also move into striking distance of Antaras. Should be very easy to take that city out then.

Just to be clear I believe that Ellimist will have 5 pikes able to hit our knights on his turn. Still no cats though. That is a flaw in his defense. We'll probably lose some knights, but in the end he's losing cities. Once we take Antaras we will be able to seige Alphecca and take our time taking the city.

In terms of tech, we are thinking about what our direction should be. Ellimist has started paper, maybe, or he's trying to trick us. Either way I think we should stay with him and tech Liberalism then take Astro with it. We may save up gold to do it. Maybe get a Great scientist to help bulb Education.

Speaking of GPs. We got a Great Prophet EOT:



We are asking Jkaen whether he has a GS to trade for the GP so he can build a shrine. I'm thinking its unlikely. As a result we may want to save the GP pop another and start another GA.

Speaking of Jkaen, we have begun our "assault" on Kuro:



Basically we're daring Kuro to attack the knights. Asking him to trade units. Use up your cats on stacks of 2. Next turn maybe we'll just straight up attack him with the knights since they've got odds. Jkaen is moving his stack onto the corm with our LBs and everyone going to march on in. I have NO IDEA how this is going to play out.

Do we have cats?

Demos:



Yay! We're #1 in MFG now too. I think razing Forma really brought him down.

[novice]

Nice work on the island!

How is JKaen's stack going to even dent Kuro's x-bows?

[NobleHelium]

We're supposed to remove the crossbows. We're getting about 68% odds on them, a bit less next turn due to increased fortify. It's not actually that great, but we can produce units a lot easier than Kuro can. I don't really expect to take the city with this attack, we're just trading some units. I think we'll just have to wait until we take Antares, and after looking at our odds at taking Bellatrix we'll ship a bunch of knights over and either do a carpet-bomb type attack on Aradia (say surround his city with 16 knights on 8 tiles) or just outmaneuver him behind the front.

[NobleHelium]

It's turn 150, so we'll be doing a longer update of sorts. I don't want to steal Lewwyn's thunder though so I'm waiting for him to update the more recent turns first.