[Spoilers] Old Human Tourist: Empress of Azteca

[retep]

Agree with THH.

Also OH instead of posting a picture of the power graph you post a wrong picture. This also happen in the report of T123 you posted the demos picture twice.

Are you guyes still finishing guilds eot125 right?

[Fintourist]

Question: How much do we want to conceal our forces from Mardoc? This Chariot could uncover our HA stack next turn. Any thoughts?

I'm slightly leaning towards a minor attempt to hide at least some of our HAs, because:
1. Mardoc might be our target pretty soon if everything goes smoothly and the less he knows about our troop composition the better.
2 If Mardoc would be planning an attack and gets a hint that we are about to pull the trigger he might delay his move until we have went in first. There is a slim chance that he would do something aggressive towards Azza during the next couple of turns.
However, it is not really practical to hide our wave of knights anyways, there are positive aspects in showing units too, so my opinion is not too strong here and just fortifying units is fine as well.

Also apologies Fintourist - Cornelius can't grow this turn if we want to have enough hammers to 1-pop whip it next turn and the turn after.

No problem at all, I just left the note so that you remember to consider the possibility. As we are going to whip the city next turn it is probably more efficient to remain at lower size anyways.

This turn we're finally working all of Alfie's cottages. The last grass hill cottage had to wait for a couple of turns so that the city could grow this turn.

Can't wait to get our capital to size 20. It hurts to see that Alfie is still not allowed to use all those grass hamlets/villages. But soon...

As an addendum I did some worldbuildering to try and figure out what Azza can see through EP spending. It won't be perfectly accurate because the AI kept turning the EP slider up , but should be good enough.

Right now we have 154 EPs on Azza and he has 96 on us.
At 170 Azza needs 76 EPs to see our graphs.
At 215 he needs 88.
At 255 he needs 100.

I don't think its worth trying to put 100 into him to hide our graphs - that would give our intentions away as sure as our power spike will.

We make 20 EPs naturally, but could make up to 50 with spy specialists, so at what point do we want sight on his cities? If we're attacking on t129 I guess we should start with 20 on t127 and then consider how many more it'll take to see the important cities by eot129 and use specialists accordingly. Of course that's all fine until he runs the slider against us...

So did you model in the total amount of EPs created during the game? Because that impacts the formula heavily. Just making sure, because my gut feeling was that Azza should need more EPs for our graphs than what your testing showed.

Hmmm.. I would say that if we indeed are not hiding our stacks immediately when we put EPs on that might well go first unnoticed by Azza and we could start already, say on t125. And hiding our graphs in a suspicious way is still better than showing the monster spike that will be visible on T128 when us completing 11 knights and a mace eot126 becomes visible. 100k+ jump in power graph might ring some bells..

So is our attack turn T129? We finish the first wave of knights mostly EOT126 and we probably need turns 127 & 128 to reach the staging tile. Or do we already start on T128, try to get first cities captured with HAs and just couple of knights in the north and our main force follows a turn behind? In-game notes show our sentry chariot reaching the Zzzzap attack tile on t127, which might be one turn too early? Current thoughts?

Btw, you probably noticed that there was a reload and you need to play this turn again..

[Fintourist]

Are you guyes still finishing guilds eot125 right?

And yup, easily We get it e.g. through two turns of 60 % slider, which leaves us with 100 spare gold.

Btw, OH, let's just play this safe and make sure that we are finishing guilds with a significant amount of overflow. It would be annoying if someone would cancel OBs after we have played and we would somehow miss the tech by 1 beaker or something..

[Old Harry]

2 If Mardoc would be planning an attack and gets a hint that we are about to pull the trigger he might delay his move until we have went in first. There is a slim chance that he would do something aggressive towards Azza during the next couple of turns.

I believe they've got enforced peace until t129... I'm leaning towards splitting the stack so that he can only see bits of it at a time. I have a feeling Mardoc has tech visibility on us. Hopefully not for long...

So did you model in the total amount of EPs created during the game? Because that impacts the formula heavily. Just making sure, because my gut feeling was that Azza should need more EPs for our graphs than what your testing showed.

Ah, no I didn't - and the AI was using the slider quite heavily, so those numbers could be totally off . Do you know where the formula for it is?

So is our attack turn T129? We finish the first wave of knights mostly EOT126 and we probably need turns 127 & 128 to reach the staging tile. Or do we already start on T128, try to get first cities captured with HAs and just couple of knights in the north and our main force follows a turn behind? In-game notes show our sentry chariot reaching the Zzzzap attack tile on t127, which might be one turn too early? Current thoughts?

Attack date - it's still up in the air for me - kinda depends what the chariot sees in Azza's capital next turn and how quick we can get Engineering.

Btw, you probably noticed that there was a reload and you need to play this turn again..

Also I'll play it safe on Guilds - I set us to 50% this turn just to have a few more beakers coming when the KTB might go up next turn.

Edit: And I've fixed those images for you retep.

[Fintourist]

I believe they've got enforced peace until t129... I'm leaning towards splitting the stack so that he can only see bits of it at a time. I have a feeling Mardoc has tech visibility on us. Hopefully not for long...

Ah, right. Although I checked F4 screen last turn and I don't remember them having that 10 turn of peace thing there. I might be wrong here though.

Ah, no I didn't - and the AI was using the slider quite heavily, so those numbers could be totally off . Do you know where the formula for it is?

I tried to find the formula (once again), but could not find anything..

Attack date - it's still up in the air for me - kinda depends what the chariot sees in Azza's capital next turn and how quick we can get Engineering.

Hmm.. I guess we get it at earliest eot129. We might fall a bit short and get it eot130. Anyways, early enough to matter in the first phase of our attack, but probably a bit too late for our declaration turn?

[Old Harry]

I believe they've got enforced peace until t129... I'm leaning towards splitting the stack so that he can only see bits of it at a time. I have a feeling Mardoc has tech visibility on us. Hopefully not for long...

Ah, right. Although I checked F4 screen last turn and I don't remember them having that 10 turn of peace thing there. I might be wrong here though.

I *think* they signed peace on t118 or 119.

Ah, no I didn't - and the AI was using the slider quite heavily, so those numbers could be totally off . Do you know where the formula for it is?

I tried to find the formula (once again), but could not find anything..

It seems to be a mixture of this one:

Code:

Passive Missions
Base Factor * (100+How much they have against you)

Demographics=0.3
City Visibility=1.2
Investigate=2
See Research=0.75

And the overall EP spend:

Code:

((2*Enemy EP)+My EP)/((2*My EP)+Enemy EP)

Azza has spent 496 and we've spent 614 so far so the EP ratio is 0.93155
He's spent 96 of those on us.

So for us to see his Demos

Code:

0.3*(100+96)*0.93 = 54.68

(the real figure is 53, which is achievable with some pretty hard rounding manipulation, but there is a good chance I'm still barking up the wrong tree )

Anyway, just in case I'm right we've spent 154 on him, so to see our Demos he needs

Code:

0.3*(100+154)/0.93 = 81 EPs

To get that number above what he's spent (assuming he keeps putting 4 EPs per turn on us) we need to put in ~53 EPs this turn, ~65 EPs over the next two, ~76 over the next three, ~87 over the next four, ~98 over the next five, etc.

So we could wait a couple of turns and put a few spy specialists to work or just start putting our normal 20 on him straight away. I'm not sure it's worth it to go beyond the values to get visibility on No Homers and Boo-urns, since if he's paying attention hiding our power should make him just as paranoid as an actual spike would, only it would be one or two turns earlier. How much attention do you think he's paying?

[Fintourist]

I *think* they signed peace on t118 or 119.

Yeah, but technically it could have been cease fire, right? Well, very probably this is not relevant anyways. At current power levels I don't really see Mardoc attacking Azza anyways, and Mardoc seeing our HAs should not impact Azza's willingness to attack Mardoc..

EP stuff

just

So we could wait a couple of turns and put a few spy specialists to work or just start putting our normal 20 on him straight away. I'm not sure it's worth it to go beyond the values to get visibility on No Homers and Boo-urns, since if he's paying attention hiding our power should make him just as paranoid as an actual spike would, only it would be one or two turns earlier. How much attention do you think he's paying?

To be honest, I would be very very surprised if Azza would check EP situation every turn if ever. I mean, I was not checking and monitoring those constantly while being pretty committed to this game.. Consequently, I would say that as long as Azza does not lose our graphs he is not going to notice anything... Meaning that the optimal scenario is reaching the level he loses graphs exactly on the turn when our power spike would become visible. And at that point I think it's a lot easier to think "oh well, those guys just have courthouses to play with" than "oh well, that 120k power spike surely is not meant for me".

[retep]

Getting visibility is fine I think that hiding the grahps is too obvious.

Also the EP formula

[Old Harry]

Getting visibility is fine I think that hiding the grahps is too obvious.

FT has convinced me that if we can hide them on t128 (when our spike should show up) Azza is less likely to panic....

Also the EP formula

Only if it's right . It sucks that it'll be ages before we can find out if it is .

We make 20 EPs naturally and we have a bunch of cities which can run spy specialists if needed:
- Butterscotch (not gathering GPPs)
- Cornelius (153/300 all merchant points)
- Daisy (not gathering GPPs)
- Englebert (67/300 all scientist)
- Flossie (not gathering GPPs)
- Gertie (21/300 Prophet points)
- Hazelnut (not gathering GPPs)
- Izzy (not gathering GPPs)

Kirby and Marmalade have GP points, but won't get an SA for a little while so aren't relevant. I'd like to be careful not to pollute Cornelius, to be sure we don't get two low-odds great spies , so Englebert and one other city (Gertie?) could run a spy specialist.

Assuming he keeps putting 4 per turn on us then (according to that equation, which may be wrong) we need this many EPs to hide our graphs:

Turn	Our EPs	Invested	EPs needed
124	154	10	200
125	164	28	210
126	192	28	220
127	220	28	230
128	248	28	242
129	276	28	254

This gives a good buffer on t128. Obviously we could run more than ten EPs this turn, then just run the specialist in Englebert, but that would require logging back in.

Edit: or we can run specialists in every city but cornelilus o t127 for 48gpp...

[Old Harry]

Turn 125

This was a fighty turn! Dtay started eating Whosit .


Here's a thought: Azza has met Cheater Hater, Dhalphir, William and Pindicator. We could declare on one of them to make it look like our spike has an explanation... I think the EP solution is the better one, but this is worth thinking about.


Demos before the whip starts to fall this turn.


Demos after.


The results.


The good news is that Azza doesn't have a lot of units in his core and is on his way to Currency rather than a military tech .


That power graph.