AT loves it when a plan comes together!! [Spoilers]

[NobleHelium]

That also wouldn't be banter. That's why banter threads are dumb.

[AutomatedTeller]

I have to admit, I don't know that I would have posted that in a banter thread. And I hate going on tilt like this - but I have no idea what the hell I'm supposed to do. There was a REASON there was only an archer in my cap, just after his commando knight 4 tiles away had just taken MASH - I thought we were going to be at peace BECAUSE I ACCEPTED HIS OFFER!! And I was running to defend against another threat.

I mean - I'm not pissed he took SWAT and MASH - that was because I was dumb. But this? I think this is dirty pool.

or, maybe it's just me being dumb. Anyway - I killed several of his units and I'll kill more, even as TT comes in behind and takes empty cities. Cause I'm really quite pissed.

[AutomatedTeller]

I should be more clear about what happened - maybe some people can talk me down, I dunno.

So, last turn, I check civstats and see that I had lost 2 cities - I had expected to lose SWAT, but didn't expect to lose 2. I came in and had an offer of 500 gold for peace. (he offered me 500 gold). Not knowing what had happened, I declined.

I took a look, realized that Bigger/TT was about to kill V and decided to take the offer, so I reoffered it. I would have happily taken nothing, but I figured I'd make the same offer right back.

Instead of accepting the offer he had made, he killed a city.

Am I overreacting? Does the fact that I had a chance to look around make that much of a difference? I honestly don't know.

It doesn't really matter - I've basically abandoned every city near bigger, so if he invades, he'll take them - I might give Man From Uncle back to Jowy, since he isn't allowed to take it back.

I guess the big question is - am I messing up the game in anger? I don't really want to do that...

[Lewwyn]

You should do what you want to do.

[AutomatedTeller]

CF is trying to flood my land with troops, but he makes offers of peace where he demands another city, but I have no idea what his forces look like, so I take a look around. Sure, it may make sense for me to take it, but I have no idea and since he's not going to actually honor a deal he made earlier... screw him. He'll take me over - I'm just assuming I can kill a lot of his units while he does it and can leave him open to get killed in return. I still have a lot of population...

[NobleHelium]

You should not be emptying every city like you are doing. Choosing hurt Cornflakes as much as possible is fine, but you're not even optimizing for that. If you had kept token garrisons in your western cities you would be able to keep them for longer to produce more units to hurt Cornflakes. As it is you're basically gifting your cities away to spite Cornflakes, which is not acceptable.

[AutomatedTeller]

The only way I can get peace is to take it when cornflakes offers it - he made it quite clear that he won't accept a deal if I have a chance to look around.

I tried to optimize to defend against bigger and was unable to.

sorry - that wasn't responsive.

Yes, I could have left a LB in each city, which would have required bigger to use 2 musketeers to take a city, which would have made little to no difference. He still has some 40 about to take V.

My point really is that CF had a chance to get me to defend against V and decided to burn my capitol instead. My only real regret is that I didn't give those cities to Jowy.

[AutomatedTeller]

ok, I kind of did care about that double move. Not that it made a difference, but I could have drafted another musket in V A) making biggers job harder and B) making the city less useful to him. plus, I could have deleted workers - instead, I got double moved for no particular reason.


I moved some units to defend LA Law from Bigger - he's going to take NYPDBlue soon - nothing to be done about that. I'll be able to either kick some ass on MASH and burn it down, thus denying everyone the shrine/colossus, or I'll just get my ass kicked. Someone is getting the Glib, can't stop that - probably bigger - he's got a LOT of units in my territory now.

[AutomatedTeller]

so, if anyone is willing to take over, the password is AT. I've put units in LA Law and most the stack is poised to hit MASH and do some damage to cornflakes - burn the city, if I can. Obviously, if you want to do different, you can - CF will probably give peace and you have 5 or 6 cities left.

[spacetyrantxenu]

I spent some time looking around and I'm not going to lie, looks like you're going down in flames here. One quick point before photos, though, if you attack and recapture your former city you won't be able to raze it. I just saw that in PB8 right at the end when I recaptured a city I had lost a long time previously. In that case the rival civ had accumulated over 50% culture on the city center tile and I still wasn't able to raze the city, so you wouldn't be able to do it here either. Your borders would, however, blow back out to their original cultural level so you'd catch Cornflakes' troops deep inside your culture again, possibly slowing him down. That is, until he recaptured the city the next time. So it's probably not worth it to attack the city, especially since it's on a hill.

A wide overview to familiarize whoever is going to be playing out these turns for you with your empire:




Your military power is heavily concentrated in the east of your territory around where your capital used to be.




You may be able to save the southeast of your territory from Cornflakes if you hold the hill many of those units are currently on. If you could fort that tile it would be a huge defensive bonus since you have a lot of CG promotions on your units (alas, only 2 workers remain!). The nice thing about holding that hill is that Cornflakes only has one move units in his attack force so he can't skirt around your defenses. If he comes near you he risks you throwing all your cannons into his stack and wiping a huge part of it. That's probably why he has been offering you peace. Since I'm globally spoiled as of June (i.e., prior to his invasion) I won't speculate further as to motives or goals, but if I were playing in his position I'd feel pretty good about the gains thus far and would want to get out of the war with my army intact. Anyway, if there is any chance you can get peace from Cornflakes you should do it, because you won't survive if he continues to press in the east while Bigger keeps shredding the west:




Sorry for the insets everywhere, but I didn't cover anything with them. Anyway, I don't know what advice to give anyone for defending this -- the fox is already in the hen house. Bigger is going for a lightning campaign with two movers, exclusively musketeers and knights, so he has no collateral to soften anything. He will take losses, it's just a matter of whether he runs out of attackers before you run out of cities. This is why you need peace with Cornflakes, without siege of his own on the field your cannons could do a fair bit of damage to Bigger's stacks which you could mop up with your own muskets or whatever else you have laying around. The trouble is you don't have any of the siege in the area that is currently under attack, and not enough hitters to do anything to either attack collateraled enemy stacks or to adequately defend the cities that are over here. I think you'll lose every one of these cities to Bigger now. Hopefully a better tactician than me will take on this challenge and put forth a workable plan for defense over here, I don't have any ideas other than whipping/drafting what you can out of all of these cities and make Bigger burn as many units as possible as he heads east.

A shot of F5 to compare your total forces against what Bigger and Cornflakes have visible around your territory:




General info:

Current production - maybe whip that university for overflow into a unit for next turn?




If you can save enough of your army to do it, HR would probably be better than representation so you can keep drafting and whipping forever. And, of course, theocracy. Play it as AW, baby!:




Power graph, on the delay. It doesn't feel like you have this much power right now:




Demographics because I always post them:




One final note for whoever plays the turn. Commodore had offered this trade to AT for the turn:




I declined it because I didn't want to take any actions anyway, never mind doing so walking in blindly. So whoever plays, if you like this deal offer it back to Commodore.

Good luck, you're going to need it!