[spoilers] Commodore: Worse than Toku, it's Giggles of Siam!

[Qgqqqqq]

Yeah sorry, it wasn't intended that way (obviously), just noted my thoughts that of had after catching up.
Should've posted in the lurker thread instead.
Sorry!





I thought *you* were the game leader

[Commodore]

If we want to hit Zaxby's asap and burn the copper....we'll need to use Sun Tzu to burn the copper as we won't have horses online fast enough to build a chariot to put on the galley. Under the right circumstances, I'm fine with sacrificing the GG unit to pillage their metal. But in this case, the timing sucks. We won't have cats into position to strike Deathtrap Hill until t103/104 at best. A fast strike at Zaxbys can go in t100? t101?

Better than that, t99 in point of fact. The thing is, it's not really about surprising them with cats against their gold, so much as getting at least a couple in front of McD's before their own cats come off the line. Those forced whips, as mentioned, already delayed the turn of reckoning a bit...why not delay a little more by burning a city?

I'm assuming they're researching all-out right now, so the less costs won't help things much. What would delay it more? Forcing unprepared whips into galleys or defenders...the power of 4-moves is such that that t99 strike at Zaxby's is also a t100 fork of McD's and LJS. Of course, not if they withdraw from the gold mine...

I'm thinking we might want to delay the Zaxby's strike by a couple of turns so that it synchs up with our first pair of cats moving into range of Deathtrap Hill.

Burning Zaxby's ASAP costs them a build queue. Capturing it a couple of turns later may give us the opportunity to burn their metal and put a 4 move galley with a unit on it in the middle of their core.

Downside to waiting is that they may well have a real defender in the city by t103, in which case we don't attack Zaxby's and sail into their core instead. If they don't already have a galley on the board in that area by then, we'll have free run of the area to do as we please for a turn (maybe two).

If we had another spear available, we could load spear + Sun Tzu (unpromoted) into the Galley and we'd have the option to bypass Zaxby's, unload the Spear and Sun Tzu onto the Copper. Promote ST to Morale/c1/shock and pillage the copper.

I'd rather be more sure of burning Zaxby's than of cutting copper for a couple turns. The original sign of White Castle was off because I misread a chop as a settle; actually it's further north and claims copper as well. So the copper mine of Zaxby's isn't their sole source, alas. So, two axes (not the mobile GG axe...he's invaluable on the front, and the galley is all the mobility needed for the embarked axes), hit Zaxby's, hopefully threaten invasion of LJS/McD's long enough to tear up all their nets.

Basically, I'm looking at final outcomes. If we can:
-Burn Zaxby's.
-Destroy all seafood in the Zulu Bay
-Assault and raze McD's before Zulus get cats
...then we're looking at three cities left, with only one granary there, and incoming more cats/HA/whumpies. I think that's a better outcome than we're going to get forcing them to rehook copper/recapture Zaxby's.

[Commodore]

Yeah sorry, it wasn't intended that way (obviously), just noted my thoughts that of had after catching up.
Should've posted in the lurker thread instead.
Sorry!

No harm, no foul, live and learn.

I thought *you* were the game leader

I'm pretty clearly in fourth place right now. Future prospect entirely depend on how well I can advance over the next 10-15 turns.

[Commodore]

Fruit of the whip. Now if I was willing to engage our second shock axe, we could kill this. But again, why? The event log shows that Adhoc must be trading blows pretty well. Fight the power little guy! I'll just keep on staring hostile at the mean mean Zulus here.


Core Generica is looking considerably happier now. Those two chops into the capital mean not only can we build that barracks->catapult in good time, it means we should be able to manage a second catapult before swapping to a library, which is a win. Verdant Acres will be whipping (ouch, yes, I know) the worker as the chop comes in, netting us a 1-turn catapult there too. So yeah, we're humming along here...need our own gems fast to be safely still happy, though.


Second fort is done near Willowbrooke. The kinda cruddy city is currently up to "kinda okay" with the netting of the crabs, although that'll go down again once they get donated semi-permanently eastward to Riverside. Still, we'll wring a good few cats and axes out of her first. Plains hill gets mined next turn if you're into that sort of thing.


The final news of the turn:


Kalin, you're going to get shock out of this place. Ligurians, bless your primitive little hearts, I want to welcome you to the Generican Autocracy. This will only hurt a little.

[Commodore]

Not to put to fine a point on it...

Plako killed an Ad_hoc city. Ad_hoc thinks that whatever he'd have done would have stopped this. RNG results mean that Plako has absolutely no obligation to reroll his success...much as it sucks for the Arabs. Plako is a stand-up guy, if he wants to reload, that's fine, but honestly if he's uncomfortable at all with it, I think we need to play on.

[Thoth]

Better than that, t99 in point of fact. The thing is, it's not really about surprising them with cats against their gold, so much as getting at least a couple in front of McD's before their own cats come off the line. Those forced whips, as mentioned, already delayed the turn of reckoning a bit...why not delay a little more by burning a city?

t99 sounds good.

But I like keeping Zaxby's. They'll be down to 4 build queues at that point. Right now, the stack on Deathtrap Hill is the bulk of their military. We'll have either two axes in Zaxby's or an axe in Zaxby's and and axe on the galley (or sub an archer ) (assuming Zax is guarded by a warrior or nothing, if they have a fortified axe and a border pop we wont' be taking the city with two unpromoted axes attacking amphibiously). If they do have an axe in Zaxby's....we sail on past and see what they've got in their cap/McDs. They'll be able to hold both, but they'll have to fall back from Deathtrap Hill in order to do it. Either way, we win.

If Zaby's is warrior/no garrison....we could sub an Archer for an axe on the Galley. Axe kills warrior or Archer occupies city. If the axe is needed to kill warrior...sail galley into city, unload archer. Load Axe. Sail one more tile.


In order to re-take Zaxby's they'll have to divert forces either directly from the McDs front or whipped re-enforcements from WT and IaO. If they don't whip out a pair of galleys from McDs and their cap, we pillage the Clams and blockade.

If they do whip out galleys and sink our battleship, they aren't whipping out axes/Impis/chariots. In the meantime, we should be able to pillage all three clams before they can kill our ship.

And 2t after Zaxby's comes out of revolt we can whip either a pro archer or pro walls so long as we capture the city with two pop points.

We won't be able to hold Zaxby's at this point if they move in force to retake it. But that will make it rather difficult to hold McDs given their current military. Both the Galley and us holding Zaxby's will be wonderful diversions.

I'm assuming they're researching all-out right now, so the less costs won't help things much. What would delay it more? Forcing unprepared whips into galleys or defenders...the power of 4-moves is such that that t99 strike at Zaxby's is also a t100 fork of McD's and LJS. Of course, not if they withdraw from the gold mine...

Oh, yeah. We move ASAP with the Galley strike team.

I'd rather be more sure of burning Zaxby's than of cutting copper for a couple turns. The original sign of White Castle was off because I misread a chop as a settle; actually it's further north and claims copper as well. So the copper mine of Zaxby's isn't their sole source, alas. So, two axes (not the mobile GG axe...he's invaluable on the front, and the galley is all the mobility needed for the embarked axes), hit Zaxby's, hopefully threaten invasion of LJS/McD's long enough to tear up all their nets.

Heh. If they have a second source, then NM the copper pillage.

IIUC, they move before us?

If so, t99 we move galley into their face. Either taking Zax or not.

Either way....t100 they swap builds to galleys (their cap can probably dry whip a galley, McDs will need a turn invested). Then we pillage 1 clam and blockade the other two.

t101: they either whip two galleys or take a 40ish% shot at our galley after a 3 pop capital whip. If we still have a galley, we pillage the other two clams.

t102: Our galley dies to two galleys.

If they ignore the sea and whip axes/whatever....we deny them the use of their sea tiles and delay them getting construction. If they whip galleys, we'll still have a city in their face distracting them and a large force threatening Deathtrap Hill and hence McDs.

If we raze Zaxby's they'll be able to either hold DT hill or retake the seas (maybe both). If we hold Zax with an Archer.....they get the option of repositioning forces to retake Zaxby's. Troops that are attacking Zax aren't defending their Westlands.

And t99 we move Sun Tsu into position with the Greatwoods stack.

Basically, I'm looking at final outcomes. If we can:
-Burn Zaxby's.
-Destroy all seafood in the Zulu Bay
-Assault and raze McD's before Zulus get cats
...then we're looking at three cities left, with only one granary there, and incoming more cats/HA/whumpies. I think that's a better outcome than we're going to get forcing them to rehook copper/recapture Zaxby's.

Agreed on the not bothering to pillage copper (given their second source).

But when we take McDs they are, as you rightly point out down to three build queues.

Either we'll have already thrashed their army and are facing only new whipped defenders. In which case we can afford to keep McDs.

Or they've retreated their army and we take McDs scot free. In which case, we can keep McDs as a forward base of operations with our army intact.

[Thoth]

pics for thought:

Battlefront:

Frontlines:

VA:

Sandbagging the chop by a turn (maybe two) by mining the hill would let us take the chop into the cat. T103 we finish the GS. We can have two grass mines available by then to work with the ex-scientists. t105 one of our whip unhappies expires and we can work another tile or specialist. (two scientists here will take 33/34 to produce another GS....worth up to 1500b + 3b per pop, so long as we clear Alp. That's a damn good beaker per turn rate).

Whipping the worker ect gets us the cat a bit faster, but it's very expensive in terms of lost beakers and capital cottage turns.

Are you sure it's worth it?

We're very close to having them on the ropes. But we're falling behind the leaders in food, hammers and gnp.

Whipping away beakers in our core is expensive.

[Commodore]

Whew, a lot to unpack here. I played the turn in disagreement with a fair bit but it is good to have to think out my reasoning. First, however, the big foreign news: Serdoa's massive score jump tells us he's the culprit, Pyramids ho! I wonder if Serdoa is in kind of the Scootalty position in PB5; industrious, isolated, and land-poor. Can't tell anything for sure though.


Firstly, Kalin's Expedition went in against the Ligures, pretty much with the best odds possible to still get +2xp from. He won, of course, but dropped down to 1.5/5 health.


One kind of interesting thing was your comment about falling behind the leaders. Actually, our demos are frankly crazy right now. The MFG surge of Serdoa's Pyramids push is still notable, but we're 4th, 3rd, and 4th in the key demographics, in an 11-player game. All the while sitting on top soldiers and second in pop (poor proxy for #citizens, but a good indicator for how tall our cities are). If we can conquer the Zulus in decent time, we're strong-to-scary contenders here.


That being said, I agree that we're not going to profit by whipping away from the core heavily. So, examining VA and the rest. Obviously, our timing for the GS has to be for the Academy to be built by the turn we turn back on tech for HBR. * That permits a 1 or 2 turn delay on getting him out. Settler for The Greenways (gems/flood plains spot) is due in five turns. I think that means we want to whip earlier, next turn:

-35/60 at start of turn 98. Chop, whip off a scientist (won't delay Construction, can tick slider up to 100%), trade cottage for horses with TM for 105/60
-t99, 45 overflow +5 from city tile+horse nets us a 1t catapult. Post-chop worker moves north to pigs, new worker (Sensei) roads 1N pigs. TM moves off the cottage to her grassland forest, settler will complete t101 at 100/100.
-t100, VA returns horse to TM, picking up the second scientist (GS is delayed 1t, and will still found academy in time for next research push). VA can slowbuild a worker with foodhammers while waiting to be less angry. Sensei finishes road, other work sinks 1t of road into the flood plain. VA's borders pop EoT
-t101, both workers start farming.
-t101, one worker moves to hill 96 to chop/road, other still farms. Settler enroute over roads via VA (saves .5gpt in expenses).
-t102, roading, farming, settler moving.
-t103, The Greenways founded. Farm finished, road done.
-t104, chop begun, FP worker moves to gems
-t105, chopping hill, roading gems.
-t106, chop done into granary, gem road done.
-t107, chopping gems, Greenways borders pop EoT.
-t108...onward. Basically, it's all VROOM VROOM, getting gems online scary-fast, and getting roads towards Coldspring Way.

*Okay, thought: Should we move the capital (academy, etc) to Tranquil Meadows?
Pro:
TM has more grassland riverside (8 vs. 5),
TM is already with better cottages (E village/hamlet unreachable by LG)
TM is slightly more central, saving ~.5gpt per city in distance maint
TM has more total eventual cottages (13 vs. 9)
Con:
LG lacks junk peak tiles, Bureau coast is somewhat worthwhile
LG has more hammers (19 vs. 11) at full potential
LG has higher potential pop (again, if coast is worthwhile)
LG has palace (it's not a huge deal, but that is a hundred+ hammers)

What do you think, Thoth? Either city makes a good capital. TM is a better commerce location with okay hammers, while LG is a great hammer location with pretty good commerce.

[Commodore]

Okay, onto the Zaxby's question. We actually move first, so they can see us and reactively whip. It sucks, but it's pretty fair when we're on the offense like this. And as mentioned in the tech thread, at least we get promo control whereas if they want promos, they have to let the AI decide.

Anyway, the situation:


Some notes:
-Zaxby has no culture. So it won't see our galley, and no bonus to defenders.
-Moving the extra tile south helps, galley can then on t100 poke towards the capital/McD's *and* blockade their food.
-Sims show 5/10 times a win if axe is in Zaxby's if we have two axes. 1/10 if axe/archer loaded
-We win 8/11 times with the first axe against an impi or chariot. Always with warrior.
-This means a second axe has a shot if Long John's is covered by a warrior, impi, or chariot t100. The Deathtrap Hill garrison *cannot* reach it in time.
-Uncertainty means the Deathtrappers need to move an AXE to cover McD's, unless they can 1t one. So the GG axe needs to move to take advantage if they strip the gold mine.
-Archer gets killed by any two anythings in Zaxby's before we can whip out another.

Ergo:


Best to take a surer shot of killing the city and killing the army, either piecemeal or with cats upon retreat. If they really screw the pooch, with two axes we have a shot at killing the capital or forcing a dry axe whip...which would mean no galley for quite some time.

Ugh, one bad news note: Construction's time went down in Zululand. Our window is going to be annoyingly short, unless we force them to be reacting with killers/ships over cats.

[Commodore]

By the way, I know I'm disagreeing with more than half of your suggestions here. Thoth.
Thank you, awesome dedlurker!

My micro and planning have been bumped up at least a sigma while responding and thinking through my own direction here.