[SPOILERS - PBEM29] spacetyrantxenu - Mao of Babylon

[spacetyrantxenu]

And finally I played my turn and had something to say back to the Allies:

[COLOR="Magenta"]Fellow Dictators,

We're either on the eve of a moderate success or I've taken bait and will soon see my little stack ripped apart. But better now than before Sian can throw any cannons at it.



OK, one longbow on defense. And probably that grenadier and a few knights hiding out in the fog. I'll bite anyway. These units cost a fortune and the men are worthless. We can breed more.



Slowcheetah, if you feel secure in moving up your men from Too Much Civ, you can land on the tile 1S of my stack. I think you should have enough of those nice CG2 LBs to hold the city without your maces. Do you have any collateral down there? If Sian doesn't reinforce this city and I am able to raze it (I see no reason to hold it, it will be crushed by Dazed's culture, although this is something to discuss) probably the next move is to wheel south and burn Joao as well (or capture since that probably makes sense for Slowcheetah -- you should have enough culture down there to maintain defensible borders). Your collateral will probably be necessary for that one. But before I get ahead of myself, we'll probably watch Sian stuff a few units into Mehmed and spoil the party. If either of you have a better tactical plan in mind, I'm up for it. Mao isn't much of a planner, you know.

Slowcheetah, when you find out what happened please fill me in on the attack on Jaw Hurting. It was obviously a naval strike, but what was the fleet composition? I need to know if I should change my build orders anywhere in the area to build some (obsolete) naval units or if I can keep on pumping land units. Also, do you know where that stack of knights went? (this may be a related question, actually). I last saw them between Willem and Get Me Jewelry. I'm not sure if they're still on the island playing defense or what. Dazed, whenever you're able to build decent naval units I'd love to get my hands on some. Although since I only share ocean with Sian near Willem Van Oranje, if you and Slowcheetah control that sea I won't really need the ships myself.

To update you guys on my tech path, I popped a golden age this turn (first one, finally) and am working on Chemistry. Steel will be next. I should be able to finish both before the GA expires and can start building cannons soon (6 turns, so about T124?) I hope we'll still have enough ground forces to do something by the time I can get them into the field.

Scouting update for the northern front, here's Hannibal's garrison this turn:




It would seem he's a bit worried about all the moving pieces up there. Too bad your hwachas are mostly wasted here, Slowcheetah. You know what isn't wasted? Cannons!

Meeting adjourned, death to our overachieving enemy!

Hail Ronald Reagan!

Xenu,
Tyrant
Republican Party[/COLOR]

[spacetyrantxenu]

[COLOR="Cyan"]Hey Guys,

JH was a naval strike from a single galleon with over two units on board (I assume Grenadiers, since Sian said he was getting 65% odds on the longbowmen I had in the city). As for the knight stack they retreated from Get Me Jewelry and I'm not actually sure where they have gone now.

I have nine hwachas in TMC which is definitely enough for an assault on Joao, how about I move them up (along with a force of maces) to Joao on my turn, give Sian a bit of a dilemma as to which city to reinforce?

Good news on the cannons Xenu, I'm about 15 or so turns from getting to frigates, but Sian doesn't have steel yet so at least we'll have someone with some technology in the right era.

slowcheetah
[/COLOR]

[spacetyrantxenu]

Isn't there work I should be doing?

[COLOR="DeepSkyBlue"]Hey Guys,

Just to let you know I've moved forces in to threaten Sian's cities of Joao II and Hannibal, I've also made sure that any vulnerable coastal cities are garrisoned with at least 4 units so they can't be taken down with a one galleon strike.

Tundra

My Units

On the Deer Tile:
4 maces
5 Pikes
4 Knights (Cheers Xenu)
13 hwachas
1 GG Chariot

Sians units

In front of City
5 Knights
2 Crossbows
1 Longbow

In City
Grenadier
Knight
Crossbow
2 Longbows
Spear
Archer

Pretty much all of his units are shock promoted so Xenu's knights will be very useful, I plan to hit the first stack with 5 cats before attempting to clean up. Using the rest on the main city.

Xenu if you want to move all of your units either onto my deertile stack (your units within my culture), or just behind (the pikes and longbows) then gift them over and I can use them next turn.

Do you guys think I can succesfully hold Hannibal if I keep the longbows alive? There are five in Xenu's stacks? The major problem is it's pretty far from reinforcements. Do you think razing and maybe resettling a buffer would be better?


Jungle

I have
14 Maces
2 Pikes
8 Hwachas

Sian Has

2 Crossbows

The plan is just to raze the city , I doubt my stack can advance into the teeth of grenadiers and knights on open ground. Hopefully this will make him refocus on the landwar and stop building up navally, might help Dazed's island attacks have some form of success as well.

Additionally, Sian discovered PP this turn, he could be headed for rifling? Or maybe airships, he'd only need Sci Method and Physics.

Frigates are approx 12 turns away for me, provided I get a second Great Scientist to bulb chemistry with. I already have one slated for PP. I can't partbulb Chem and Astro because Chem unlocks Sci Method which blocks Astro on the GSci preferences.

slowcheetah[/COLOR]

[spacetyrantxenu]

[COLOR="Cyan"]I like that we're pressuring Sian. He needs to be on the defensive. I am fully expecting he has enough units to stop one of the two attacks in the jungle, but I doubt he can stop both. That's good. Every time we make a gain in one place, it makes it easier elsewhere. Also, if we can remove on of those two cities, we make some serious cultural in roads to make attacking more cities easier.

I agree too that it will help my island attacks, though I think Sian is expecting me to join the war. He just dumped massive EPs on me. I don't know if was all of them but it was tons so I lost his graphs. The good news is that my plan will involve forking two island cities so he won't be able to keep both! :D

Dazed
[/COLOR]

[spacetyrantxenu]

[COLOR="Magenta"]Fellow Dictators,

Mao always says "when in doubt (also, when not in doubt), BURN IT DOWN." If there is any concern over holding the cities we take, just burn and pave. If the war is successful we can build settlers cheaply enough and won't tie up defensive garrisons while we need to conserve every unit we can for forward action. Then again, I say burn it as the party without a contiguous border so if you think you can hold it, by all means give it a try. I just know that if we raze cities as we go Sian will have no chance to recapture them to undo our work, so I think that in keeping with our primary objective of beating down the leader it makes more sense to do the most damage to him. If we get him sufficiently beat down that we enter a land grab phase, well by all means we can enjoy the land lottery then. But we're nowhere near that point for now, so I say burn it all down.

I have the save and will play it tonight. I won't have time to play it at lunch unfortunately -- Work is crazy, Mao is a real slave driver in war time apparently (or an OOC excuse is that I just accepted a job offer and now have one week to wrap things up here. ) When Sian sent me the save it came with this one liner, his response to my garbage stack invasion: "3 granadiers and 2 longbows ... do you feel lucky?" Well, we'll see how lucky I feel. If the odds don't look good do you guys think it would make sense to pillage and come back with cannons or just press on? If he has stocked those 5 units in the city I doubt I'll be able to take it in any kind of balanced hammer trade off, but if he has sent this much here that seems to support Slowcheetah's finding of inadequate defense at Joao. I'll check the odds (and gasp maybe do a WB test? I can't swear to that, I have boxes to pack!), but the best move here may be to let Slowcheetah rip through Joao and swing up with the hwachas that are left, there should be plenty. In a few turns when I start pumping cannons non stop I'm going to have a shortage of hitters, so I don't want to unnecessarily waste any at the outset. Just thinking out loud here.


Slowcheetah, since the game is on I'll go ahead and gift over all the units in the north that can get into your culture next turn. I had moved the knights up by your city previously to hide the gift so Sian wouldn't know where they ended up, but I have a feeling he knows we're throwing the house at Hannibal. May as well just go on and do it. I hadn't thought about this before but do you need some cash to handle the extra unit support costs? Maybe when you raze the city the pillage cash will offset it a bit. Let me know what you need. But yeah, as for keeping Hannibal my thought would have been to keep it if Sian didn't have gunpowder units in the field, especially if I had captured it. Cheaply whipped walls+castle means game over for the counter attack, but grenadiers don't care about that so I still think we should burn it.

Dazed, would you like me to provide you with any of Sian's graphs for a given turn? I don't normally screen shot them every turn, just every couple of turns to keep any lurkers interested, but I can grab his power chart for you if you need it. In general there isn't much to see, his power grows steadily, minus any time a stack wanders within range of Slowcheetah and meets a swift death. But then he rebuilds even faster

May our enemies flee in terror before us!

Hail Ronald Reagan!

Xenu,
Tyrant (and now Presumptive Nominee)
Republican Party[/COLOR]

[spacetyrantxenu]

T119 - How about a turn update in the form of diplomacy?

[COLOR="Magenta"]Fellow Dictators,

Troops are on the move but I opted not to attack into Mehmed as the exercise would have been futile. A stack composed of half ancient era units and half classical/renaissance won't do much against the three grenadiers and LBs Sian had on hand. I've moved south in order to irritate him a bit and dare him to attack. I like my odds better on the defensive here anyway. If he hasn't killed or maimed these units by the time I can bring in cannons (or if a favorable opportunity presents itself) they'll be nearby. Depending on how the battle for Joao goes on Slowcheetah's turn it will probably be more clear what I can achieve with these guys.

Slowcheetah, good luck in the battle for Hannibal. It looks like you have 33 units in your stack ready to move in, I think that should get through to Hannibal.

Dazed, here is the power graph at the end of my turn:

I'm laying off the whip during my GA so I can get to Steel before it runs out (I'm working a lot of coast tiles right now, which isn't great but three commerce is three commerce). When Steel is in and the GA ends my population is going to crater as I catch up on my production. One question, do you guys know if catapults upgrade to cannons in the build queue? If I can get a one turn headstart on building them that would be nice, especially when I get back to whipping the life out of my peasants. Also, Dazed, lest you think I'm not doing my part to build units my power graph has flattened out the last two turns as I've gifted a ton of units to Slowcheetah. Since you and he are both IMP it probably makes sense for you two to fight the battles when possible, I don't mind being the Arsenal for Tyranny. It's also easier for one person to form an attack, so I'm going to trust you guys to get my men killed correctly. Just kill more of Sian's guys than you do of mine.

Hail Ronald Reagan!

Xenu,
Tyrant
Republican Party[/COLOR]

Here's the end of turn shot in the north, showing final positions and my UI overlay:



That's a lot of units, I really hope we can do some damage with them.

I'll have enough cash to run 100% science for one more turn, then it's break even until Steel finishes. In case I don't get a response from Dazed or Slowcheetah, do catapults (or trebuchets) upgrade to cannons in the build queue?

[Ceiliazul]

T119 - How about a turn update in the form of diplomacy?

First I was like, "words?"

Then I was like, "Maces!"

That's my kind of diplomacy!

[AutomatedTeller]

I can take over for a few turns at least - get the game through the weekend, if not longer. I don't THINK I've looked at any of the other threads in the greens game (I did look at some of them in the vets game), but if I did, it was awhile ago.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Since we have complete map info I assume nothing in the vets game would matter anymore, right?

Want to PM me your contact info? I can forward the save to you. Also, THANK YOU.

EDIT: Never mind, I pulled your email address from the PBEM34 tech thread. I'm sending the save to you now and will post in the tech thread here to let the other players know of a new entrant into the contest!

[AutomatedTeller]

is the current plan that all those forces go to take Hannibal? Do they wait until they all gather?