PBEM8 - regoarrarr takes over for Meatbalz

[regoarrarr]

Okay - some crazy spam text message woke me up early, and the save was in so I decided to play.

First check - event log and "red text of doom" show nothing, so no attacks from Shoot the Moon (yet!) I can only hope his airport wi-fi travelings prevent him from carrying out any kind of detailed attack over the next few turns

Check on ad hoc's garrison and "the" tile



All still as it has been - next workers road, and a "test" Guerilla archer moves to the forested hill to check for more "baddies". None spotted from that vantage point, though of course there are a few tiles still in the fog (stupid Shoot the Moon killing my galley)



First cat goes in for a shot at the G3 longbow who defends at 15.30 (!)



And takes him down to 4.0/6! He had only a 24.6% chance of winning each round, so giving 3 hits out of 7 is a good stroke of luck for me. The longbow still defends at 12.06 so a C2 knight still doesn't have odds, so let's send in some more!

My CR1 cat goes in next and gets in one more shot - longbow now down to 3.3/6, which makes the crossbow the next defender (modified strength 12). First cat goes in and does bupkus (odds returning to normal ) - next one gets 2 hits dropping the crossbow to 4.3/6. Longbow is back to defending, and a C2 knight has 73% odds. The only question is whether or not to send in my remaining catapult. I decide to, and he withrdraws (31% odds to do so), wounding the longbow to 1.3/6.



As you can see here's the garrison after a good old-fashioned catting. The rest of the battle is not very interesting

C2 knight vs. injured crossbow @ 87% - win!
C1 Shock knight vs. injured spear @ 90% - win (I guess I can stop saying "injured" since due to the catting everything is injured )
Unpromoted knight vs. dog soldier @ 95.6% - win
C1 crossbow vs. the good ol' G3 longbow @ 90.9% - win
C2 crossbow vs. (non-injured! ) catapult @ 91% - win
C2 crossbow vs. (non-injured!) catapult @ 91% again - win
C2 crossbow vs. (non-injured!) catapult @ 91% again again - win
Chariot vs. dog soldier @ 92% - win
Unpromoted crossbow vs. dog soldier @ 98.3% - win
Unpromoted crossbow vs. dog soldier @ 98.3% again - win
C1 mace vs. the last dog soldier @ 95% - win and...



Victory! Besides the good news of not losing a single unit (save my suicide cats and I even saved one of those!), a) there is no surprise stack of units in the fog, b) The city came complete with granary AND forge, AND c) that last battle put me over the edge for a Great General :woohoo:



And as you can see he has what we in the business like to refer to as a "darrell-esque" road network over here, so I don't think he can hit me next turn anyways (unless he has a bunch of spare workers in the fog). Actually I'm not even certain he has Engineering yet.

Total losses - 20K soldier count and 132 hammers for me, 59K and 310 hammers + city for him.

And since I only used 3 of my knights for city capturing duty, there's 2 spare - one of them I promote to sentry and stick him on that forested hill, allowing me my first look at the Native American capital of Greyhawk.



Tech-wise, as you can see from the screenshots above, I decided to slip in Literature (1t) this turn so that Cardamom can go right from the pikeman he's building currently into the Heroic Epic. I should then be able to put max science into Gunpowder the turn after that to finish that off in 1t as well, then it's on to Nationalism (Med -> Philo -> Nat).

After I ended turn, we had some border re-adjustment



I'm not sure why it took 2 turns, but borders in the west have now adjusted for the razing of the Byzantine city of Nicomedia. And in the east, I grabbed the roaded desert tile (indicated with a circle), thus reducing (but not eliminating) the threat to my interior.

In the north, the islands are starting to fill up.



The Incan city of Sunset Strip is a recent addition of ~3-5 turns, and this is the first turn I've noticed at least ad hoc's new city of Poverty Point. I think that I'm going to settle 1SE of the horse tile (you can be 2 tiles away from cities if they're on different landmasses) - that will allow me to share one of Basil's fish tiles (it grows too fast anyways with 2 fish)

[Sciz]

Nice attack!

Things are looking up a bit now, I think

[regoarrarr]

Nice attack!

Things are looking up a bit now, I think

Thanks.

Things are looking up indeed, but that's not hard given how low I was. I am still in a VERY precarious position wrt Shoot the moon and WarriorKnight. Either one of them could take me out with little effort at this point (or at least soon when they get rifles).

Let's see if we can put this in SAT format

ad hoc : regoarrarr :: regoarrarr : Shoot / WK

[darrelljs]

Reading this on my phone so you might have said,but what's the befofre/after on his power?

Darrell

[regoarrarr]

Reading this on my phone so you might have said,but what's the befofre/after on his power?

Darrell

Hard to tell exactly what his power is, as he's 4th (and not last), but at the start of last turn I was at 501K and he was slightly below me, so let's say 425K. He lost 59K + 3K in pop + 4K in forge so down to about 359K.

Apparently his laptop fried over the weekend as he had the save for a long time. I didn't want to post anything about it because I didn't want it to seem like I was rubbing it in.

In other news, I think we figured out where Shoot the Moon's huge power spike was heading.



Good news: Not for me
Bad news: Anything that gives my most powerful neighbor even MORE power

Adrianople was the site of the Pyramids and is marked here in red



Again, good news: the deer / iron island is mine (at least for now)
Bad news: Another front against Shoot

You can also see in the first pic that ad hoc researched Guilds at some point here and has knights.

[regoarrarr]

Okay finishing up with the turn -

Literature came in and I put Cardamom onto the Heroic Epic (due in 8 turns). I turned science up to 80% and at a loss of -100 gpt, I got 341 beakers which was enough to finish off Gunpowder. I still have 362 gold in the bank, in case I need to do any kind of upgrades.

Next will be Meditation (probably down to 10% will be enough) then Philosophy and Nationalism. I probably have just about enough money to go 100% on Philo -> Nat, getting them in 1 and 3 turns each. Then probably to Banking so I can double revolt to Nationalism and Mercantilism and then up to Rifles.

I have 1 theater done, and the one in Cinnamon (GT city) is 1t from completion. 2 theaters complete this turn, and the 4th is due in 2t in Pepper. 5th theater will be Paprika who can do a 1t theater next turn, which will allow me to whip Cinnamon's as the 6th theater to get max hammers into the Globe.

[regoarrarr]

Save is back around and with my discovery of Gunpowder I have joined the Renaissance Era!

WK popped a Great Prophet last turn and built the Hindu Shrine, as if he needed any MORE economic power

No attacks or anything on the interturn, so that's nice! As I discussed in yesterday's turn report, I now have 3/6 theaters built and 3 more in production, so I whipped the one in the Globe city of Cinnamon, so hopefully we'll get a good amount of overflow into the Globe.

Ad hoc is piling up units in his capital.



I have no real designs on trying to take him out but need to protect against him heading my way, of course. Salt will come out of resistance at EOT I believe. Obviously 7 catapults means I'm going to have to hit out, so I need more catapults this way. I have 7 catapults total, and 6 of them are over near StM.

Speaking of Mr. "the moon", I got a trireme over to his recently captured city of Adrianople.





That's 175K of his military power, and he also just researched Chemistry, perhaps on his way to Steel for cannons.

WK also has 2 galleys on his border island city with me, so I felt I needed to upgrade my archer on defense to a longbow and slot a longbow in the queue there. I can't hold it from a concerted attack but I can at least make it costly.

[regoarrarr]

Turn 127 save is back around to me and I am greeted with the splash screen for Meditation. I turn science up to 100% to get Philosophy in 1. It's too bad that nobody is probably tracking my techs, as that will be now the 4th turn in a row that I'll have discovered a tech (Literature, Gunpowder (finished off), Meditation, Philosophy). The next tech will be Nationalism, which will likely take 3-4 turns.

Shoot the Moon is stockpiling cash (up to 800 gold or so) which means either a) saving up for a run at a tech (likely Steel), or b) saving up money for a big cat->cannon upgrade, or c) both .

My once and future city of Salt came out of resistance, and due to all 72 of my stored up culture, popped borders out to 40%



WarriorKnight's galleys moved out of his border city



Though with 3 moves, he can still hide on the fish tile if he wants. At least at this point, I have these island cities pretty much at the big dawgs' pleasure - whenever they decide they want to take them, they can. Like I said earlier, the only thing I can do is make it as painful as possible. And once I get up to Nationalism, being able to draft muskets in these cities (once they get their happy caps up) will make a nice deterrent.

Shoot the Moon took another Byzantine city this turn, so hopefully WK realizes that weakening me is not in his (WK's) best interests, since the more credible of a defense I can provide against him (StM), the better.

Shoot just passed WK this turn for the top population



30% to about 29% for WK. I have 24% which doesn't leave much (17% total) for the other 2 civs. If we talk about total population points, I have 90 pop points, which means that there are 90 / .2387 or 377 total population points. So 115 for Shoot and 111 for WK, which combined with my 90 is 316, so 61 total population points for the other 2 civs. I'm not sure how many more cities Serdoa has but it can't be many (I bet just 1 or 2).

Worst food is 23 and worst production is 12 so yeah probably 1 or 2 cities, depending on the size of the cities. He still is showing as 72 land tiles so maybe he has a couple small cities that he's been whipping into the dirt. Still, it can't be long...

[darrelljs]

:zzzz:

Darrell

[regoarrarr]

:zzzz:

Darrell

Wait, YOU are sticking it to ME about thread updating? I'm busy updating YOUR thread bub!!!

Seriously though nothing happened last time - Philosophy came in, Shoot is probably getting in place to take another Serdoa city and I'm starting on Nationalism (due in 3-4).

I don't have the save yet today (I usually have it when I wake up) but I'll post when I play