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Turn 66
(May 21st, 2020, 12:53)shallow_thought Wrote: What, no arrows all over the diagram from OH?
Have fun.
 OH actually made me do one for him couple of turns ago, but that is too quick-and-dirty to share..
Anyways, Elkad did not have time to reinforce his horse city:
Unless we can take Elkad's capital, that city will be a terribly slow starter, but no can do. OH has a good principle of not renaming cities until they come out of revolt, but really, who likes STDs?
Speaking of the cap, this is where we stand:
Unfortunately Elkad had an axe in range and happened to finish a spear at the end of last turn (both N of Chlamydia), so we don't get a lucky surprise capture. Might not get a capture for a good while to be honest, but let's talk big picture with more time. The main HA stack hides on city ruins and will be able to move in next turn.
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Turn 67
This was expected to be a setup turn, but Elkad did not respect our galley and left us an opening:
Elkad: Spear+warrior in the city, Axe left outside.
We: HA in range and axe+quechua in the boat.
To put it short we have a 40 % chance to end the war immediately in a crushing way.. Take the city with aforementioned units and kill the axe with our wounded chariots. 
40 % chance of total victory is just too good of an opportunity to not to take. The first fight is the deciding one. Our Axe needs to get 4 hits or better against the defending spear. So here we go.. 
***
Axe amphi-attach vs Spear 22.5 %... LOSS (3 hits) 
One hit short. Well, I guess it would have been just too nice..  The roll is luckily average enough that it leaves us with a positive follow-up fight..
C1 HA vs Injured Spear 86 %... WIN!
***
Quechua does not take the 0.5% shot at the capital and covers the HA. HA did not take many hits and we leave auto-promo on so that it still gets nice odds when defending against an axe. Main force moves in and this is where we stand (Elkad whipped a spear in the capital, which appeared after turn roll):
Overall this exchange was net positive for us (axe for a spear) and we are little bit better than we were at the start of the turn. I guess the following turns will decide whether this axe roll will be the game-changing moment that will haunt us for the rest of the game.. I'll be a bit sad if we do not end up being successful with this investment:
***
Finally the global news: Commodore declared on Miguelito, which places Hitru as the front runner with regards to our Miguelito-pink-dot betting...
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Turn 68
I logged in to two pleasent surprises:
- Elkad had not upgraded his warrior to a spear
- Elkad had attacked out (and our C2 HA had even taken a spear down with him)
***
After not capitalizing on our 40 % victory chance I was expecting a costly attack on Elkad's capital, but this looks a lot better.  After figuring out the attack order we started the job:
- Wounded C1 Chariot vs Warrior 28 %... LOSS
- Wounded C1 Shock Chariot vs Axe 27.5%... LOSS
Oh well, we wanted a chariot vs axe fight and it was a coin-flip whether one of the chariots survives..
- C1 HA vs wounded Axe 93 %... WITHDRAW
Argh. At least the HA did not die.. Next we want to clean up with a Quechua so that we still have 3 HAs in range to take Elkad's copper city next turn..- Quechua vs. wounded Axe 85 %... LOSS (0 hits!)
  That's a really bad set of rolls, which probably means that we can't capture Syphilis next turn..
2 HAs take >99.9 % fights to capture the city (To add to the insult, somehow one of the HAs managed to take 2 hits in the process)
No infra, but capture gold economy is a real thing..  Really annoyed about the combat rolls during the last two turns as this war should be over with our chances.. But still, can't really complain. If two turns ago someone had given me an option to take Elkad's capital at the cost of Axe, HA, 2 Chariots and Quechua, I would have taken that without hesitation.
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Turn 69
We removed that archer with a 99% battle, but unfortunately due to last turn's events, we did not have enough firepower to attack Elkad's remaining spear. We were expecting an archer when the turn rolled, but Elkad had enough hammers to finish a spear in Syphilis. This means that next turn we need to decide whether we take a 50/50 shot at capturing the city. (STDs deserve to be removed for sure)
Cornflakes declared on Elkad. There was some actual WW, but Elkad did not lose any power so captured worker(s) at Elkad's island (maybe with a scout kill somewhere) is the most likely explanation. I was expecting Cornflakes to be busy with Ras, but it makes sense for him to go after Elkad's island, which until the turn roll did not have a single defender.
Let's talk big pic once we know how this war with Elkad concludes. Meanwhile I keep mourning about that one 40 % axe roll that could have led to a crushing victory..
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Posts: 2,991
Threads: 7
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Turn 71
Cornflakes took out Elkad's island city and spears there. So all Elkad has is this one final wounded spear guarding Syphilis:
- HA vs wounded Spear 98.2 %... LOSS (1 hit)
Anyone surprised? Well, our final chance to salvage our attack as the spear earned its next promo with the fight.
- Wounded HA vs wounded Spear 58.7 %... LOSS
Do I even need to say that these past 5 turns are by far the worst and most brutal string of RNG I have ever faced. In any game. Anywhere.
***
Just for the sake of my mental health, I need to check out a bit and this has to be my final report for now. This ended up being a game that I cared about. And it was even almost won already. But now it turned into something else. I guess disaster is a good word..
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Oh boy. That's really rough. 
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It's fairly ironic that the GG is named Leonidas.
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(May 26th, 2020, 12:18)Charriu Wrote: Oh boy. That's really rough.
Thanks, appreciated.
(May 27th, 2020, 01:20)TBW Wrote: It's fairly ironic that the GG is named Leonidas.
Yeah.. Could that Leonidas-inspired spear be the most heroic spear in RB history?
I mean, that wounded spear kills our six HAs 1 time out 3704 tries. In other words, we take the city a bit more often than 99.97 % of times. Unfortunately the game decided that I needed this lesson to understand that these odds can't be rounded up to 100%.
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The only good thing about this is that, in future, the lurkers will have a thread to point out to any players whining about "bad" RNG.
It may have looked easy, but that is because it was done correctly - Brian Moore
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